Underwater
by starshine
Summary: The price of betrayal is high, but the price of wrong presumptions might be higher, and no one is too mighty to fall. Ward and the team struggle with the consequences of their actions shortly after the fall of Centipede. Be warned that the narrative gets very dark at the beginning, and remember that redemption is possible for everyone, if they fight for it long enough.
1. Chapter 1

She pressed the trigger three times in a row, and felt the aftershocks echo on her bleeding palm. The first nail went right through flesh and bone, she knew it even before she saw Ward take one imbalanced step back. The second felt like it might have not done too much damage, and she pressed the trigger of the nail gun one more time, leaning her full weight on it in search of the minuscule jump that assured her that she had shattered a another bone. She never noticed if he screamed at that. It was beyond the point. After a whirlwind of kicks and punches, falls and contortions and a damned fucking saw she was well aware that she had just achieved her full victory. Ward had been aware of it, too. He was good, had always been. The impartial, professional sort of respect for his skill never entirely left May despite all of what had transpired the last few days, and the trail of increasingly deeds to which he had applied said skill to. She had thoroughly assessed him on the first day on the Bus, and had deemed him to be both fit to fill his position as the team specialist and relatively uncomplicated to deal with in case the necessity arised. Even though, May had never been fan of those incensed Saturday night bets in the Academy on who could take whom in how many rounds. It was a question of skill, and luck and above all mindset. Ward could have just as easily overpowered her just right now. Pushed a little harder, pressed her head a centimetre further into the path of the saw instead of opening his mouth and talk.

He did it once again, just before she delivered the kick that finally sent him to the ground. Got a hand up – such a defensive gesture, all but telegraphing defeat, she was almost, but not quite, taken aback by it - and mouthed "May". She never stopped to think of what she did after that. She went directly for his throat in a move delivered to kill. Ward floundered for a second, first pain and then fear ghosting over his eyes, and then he was finally down on his back, what little air left to him leaving his lungs in one excruciating gasp. He grimaced in pain, tried to take a lungful of air and shuddered when the agony made the larynx constrict the already damaged airway. The second breath was a beautiful exercise in meekness and caution. By his third gulp of air his arms had fallen out of their protective stance, and his hands had relaxed slowly. May watched from a certain distance. She had taken many prisoners before, and she was well aware of that last spike of fight or flight instinct that tended to overcome a person upon understanding that all is lost and they truly have no hope for escape anymore. She had seen prisoners lash blindly at their armed guards to the point of having to be shot at, and she had seen them struggle against handcuffs until they made themselves bleed. Ward's was probably the calmest reaction she had ever witnessed. He just lay there staring at the ceiling, his breathing swallow but already controlled, his left foot twisted as to keep pressure from the wound. May could have sworn she could see all his muscles go lax at once, and could not deny that the display of utter submission to his very unpleasant fate gave her a nice fuzzy feeling. He had never been on top, she thought to herself. She would never have stood for it, had he attempted to, but then he never seemed to want to, never even remotely looked like he wanted to try.

May picked the pistol he had carried, found own weapon and cuffed his arms viciously behind his back before venturing away in search of pliers. They had made such a mess of the area, it was almost impossible to believe that a small army of Deathloks had not been partaking in the fight. By the time she came back there were other agents roaming about the place, and Ward was standing in a somewhat upright position between two guards. May passed the pliers to the closest of them. Extracting the spikes would take a while, and she was not in the mood to get on her knees for this.

She found Coulson in the main hangar, talking to Fury over several dead and deformed bodies of Cybertech soldiers. Garrett's corpse, skin boiled off and face caved in, was the most prominently displayed of them all. From what she could hear of the conversation, his foray into full psychosis has been deemed to be funny by Coulson and Fury both. May was not sure it was the most sensible approach, but she would take a somewhat oblivious, joking and happy Coulson over a stressed and freaked out Coulson of late. They all had scored a big victory today. They were allowed to take a few kicks out of it before all cost and consequences started to set in.

She came nearer, automatically surveying the scene to make sure it was secure. Someone had to bag Garrett; the body would need to be analysed and taken care of no matter how unpleasant the thought. Phil noticed her approach and gestured to come nearer, not at all preoccupied with the further Fury reveal. May made her way toward the group, peripherally aware of the three pairs of steps trailing at her back, two strong and assured and one with a barely noticeable drag in it. She had expected Coulson to be pleased, but she should really have known better by now. As soon as he saw Ward his face fell into a mask of calculated calmness that spoke of dark depths hidden within.

"He has some trouble speaking. I might have crushed his larynx", she announced pre-emptively in case Phil decided he wanted to extract all the answers from him then and there. Retrospectively it has been a huge tactical mistake, for all it had felt amazing for a while afterwards.

She wondered if Ward understood that it was not meant as a killer punch. They had no use for him dead, and the intelligence inside his head was way too good to pass it up. Since Ward had been revealed as a traitor, May had been slowly filling herself with the most pure and distilled anger, bottled and treasured until the right time to let it out. The fight had felt glorious and raw, spurred on by the recent close call with the Berserker staff. Ward calling her by her name while going down had been the last drop. He had so rarely, if ever, done that before. Them working together and needing to communicate usually meant tons of shit were hitting the fan, and in combat situations Ward never had the need to call out to get her attention; May was professional enough to always have a part of her mind trained on him. And out of the field… They were into sex, not into conversations and feelings. May was not sure if they had ever said anything at all. So when Ward had called to her, falling, she had seen red. She had wanted to shut him up, and she went for the right move.

Coulson wanted to know if she had gotten it all off her chest. She had not thought the boss capable of such a wistful thinking. She would never have it off her chest. She had slept with the bastard, one bed, no clothes, and wasn't it the most vulnerable position in the world?  
"He's still breathing, isn't he?"

The fact that he was still breathing had nothing to do with going easy. Watching the beginnings of a vicious bruise form over Ward's throat May realised how close she had come to killing him. Caved the larynx a little deeper inside, cut off the airflow completely. But then they would be without intel, and she would have executed an already subjugated prisoner. Exactly like Ward had done to Thomas Nash.

Coulson was speaking again, briefly underlining what May already knew. Ward would first be made to give up all and every ounce of Hydra intel he consciously possessed, and then be worked further on to extract the peripheral info he probably wasn't even aware of. They were all standing in a circle, Coulson talking, everybody listening. It was almost like all of them were part of the same team again. May turned around and went to stay by Coulson side. It was a somewhat knee jerk reaction, but also offered a vintage point of view of Ward's badly bruised face. For all he was powerless to speak up, he did stood quietly on his own accord, listening to Coulson´s speech with a slightly distant expression, but all in all doing a reasonable effort of looking directly into his eyes with out flinching. May would have mopped the floor with him if he had dared to do any different. However, what finally succeeded in winning a full blown flinch from Ward was the description of his former mentor as a deranged narcissist. He looked away and to the floor, where Garrett's mangled body was being taken away.

"But most of your torture will be internal…", was going on Coulson.  
"And a little bit external", peeped in May. The bastard was now only having eyes for his ex mentor, a vacant and slightly glassy expression on his face.

The remaining surviving mercenaries were collected, with a solid claim of illegal detention, torture and extortion by the victims of the incentives program. Coulson went away for a couple of minutes and came back after a grandiose explosion grinning at the new toy in his hands. May recognised the object with vague distaste. Throwing the Berserker staff into the ruins of the building was a dangerous and childish move in retrospect, because sooner or later someone would find it. They would need to collect and guard it, because judging by Director Coulson´s smile, this time around the items of unknown origin weren't going to be sent to the sun. Which was a mistake, they were already committing the same mistakes and they haven't even started. But she could not bear to talk to him about it now.

They took a couple of vans loaded with tech to the Bus, May riding with Tripplett in the second van while Coulson and Skye drove the first. They were already packed and ready to leave when Coulson came up to them, several nameless agents that had been shadowing Fury earlier now dragging Ward behind.

"You'll have to take him. Skye does not need to come anywhere near him right now".  
May shrugged her shoulders. She was driving, and the order was issued in direction of Tripplett anyway. Of course they were taking him with them. Ward was a ghost right now; they all were. Law enforcement would not know a first thing about what to do with him, and any jail that tried to hold him would probably loose a couple of officers on one cloudy night. They would have to take him to the Playground, and deal accordingly. The intel would be worth it. Hydra secrets, at the very minimum names of other shady corporations, their leaders, their hidey holes. Judging by Ward's vacant look as Tripplett made him kneel on the floor of the van and used a second pair of cuffs to shackle the first pair to a metallic security ring, he was figuring out as much himself.

"All set, sir?"  
"You can go now, boys. The bastard is safe here in our care." A safety release clicked pointedly.

May drove off, looking pointedly into the rear mirror as Tripp took his position at the side of his prisoner. He was loyal and eager, but he had never slept on a cot beside Ward's on the Bus, had never eaten sandwiches together, never played board games (she hasn't either, but she had listened to the team on the comms, serene in the knowledge that they were all safe with him there). He had no point of reference to call Ward a bastard.

Which left her to take care of what needed to be done. Coulson would want to play the good cop, or not participate at all. It was all right. May was more than prepared to be the bad one. She would not enjoy it, but it had to be done. They had all had counted on Ward, but May had taken him to bed, and did not that smart more than anything. She supposed it meant that she was partially compromised and not too suitable for the job, but she was not angry for the sex itself. At least not like a woman scorned, what was what Skye seemed to imply while distracting Ward at Cybertech. May had initiated it, had controlled every step of it, and had called the end. She had not been seduced, could never be seduced, and Ward had been clever enough to know that. May gave him the opening, and despite everything that had transpired now she was completely convinced that the first night he had taken her up on the offer not because of his orders, but because of his own experiences with the Berserker staff. For her part, she had wanted a little oblivion and had expected the hungry, animalistic sex of the post induced rage to do it for her. Ward has been anything but. He had been, and then kept on being, thorough and attentive, if a little by the numbers lover. His moves on her were like his sniper play: he set a target, then approached it with precision and skill, making countless little course corrections until he got it just right, time and again, painstakingly thorough and patient. She had started to suspect that he took the most pleasure in the cleanness and precision of a job well done. He never made any special claims as to what he himself actually liked or wanted, and that had made him seem safe in her eyes.

They drove away, then they flew. May sat with Skye on the Bus, hoping that her presence would instil the girl with the kind of quiet confidence a field agent needed after a hard job. She had performed admirably with the bomb, rescuing the prisoners, staying cool and collected while playing bait for Ward. He would not shoot her, she had assured repeatedly. He would want to talk. And talk he did, except nothing of what he said had really made any sense. "I had finally wanted something for myself", he had said. It had sounded creepy, but beyond that... Coulson had implied that he had only been a follower. Skye had called him weak. He was none of those things to May; a grown man with fighting skills that rivalled her own. He had had the patience and self control to become one of the best snipers of the agency. He was a damn good spy who spoke six languages and was able to transform into ten different personas. He could have done exactly how he wanted, at any moment he wanted. He could have killed Garrett a thousand times over and come clean about Hydra, but he had tried to kill Fitzsimmons instead.

She stood up and went down to the cargo bay, two bottles of water and a sandwich for Tripp in her hands. Tripplett was sitting on the ladder, checking some gadget they had confiscated from Cybertech. Ward was leaning against a wall, hands shackled to a pipe behind his back. His belt had been taken, May noticed with approval. His watch and his shoes were also gone. His head was bent down, but as May watched he straightened a little and started to make a swallowing motion, then froze. Wincing with pain, Ward finally bent over and spit a mouthful of bloody saliva on the floor. That last kick she gave him has made a number on his face. The left eye was swelling mightily, and looked almost completely closed

"Was it worth it?" It was good to see him startle, even if it only manifested in Ward blinking once and holding his breath a fraction of second too long. After that he pointedly looked directly at May, exactly the way he had done when she had chimed in with her promise of a more bodily type of torture back at Cybertech.

"I realise you cannot speak, but you are surely able to gesture yes or no." He did not react to that either, just stared back at her with that attentive, tense expression of his. He was waiting to be hit, downed on May. Well, she was through with punching for today. "Sit down", she said. When he gingerly did, she uncapped a bottle of water and poured it down on Ward's bleeding foot. She would have to go up and get hold of some disinfectant and a bandage, but that had to wait until Skye and Simmons weren´t near the medbay to figure out what was going on. They could cheer on or they could be horrified, and May sincerely did not care one or the other way. They just needed not to get in her way.

"Make no mistake, I will make it hurt", she promised. "But not where the others can hear you, and not before making sure you are strong enough to take it. Your psycho leader is dead, his operation is in shambles. The good men Hydra has used are all gone to their wives and children, and will sleep peacefully through the night. And here you are. Alone, with nothing to bargain with, with nobody who'd care if we threw you from the plane like you did with our friends. I could break your fingers, electrocute you, cut you up with these little bistouries from the chem lab. And make no mistake; everybody on this plane would cheer me on."

Tripplett was watching her with open curiosity. May supposed he had thought he'd be the one to take up the unpleasant job. She would have let him, if she could. She did not want this to happen. She was emotionally compromised. But she also was the one who knew Ward better. Who has read his file before deletion. Tripplett had not fought beside him with the Berserker staff. Had not watched him go at the punching bag, and succeeded in making him stand down with a couple of kind words. He has not been as close to Fitzsimmons as the rest of them were.

"Do you know what I want you to think on while you wait? That had you not been so weak, had you stood up just once, it would all have been different. You would be sitting upstairs with the team now. With your team. So tell me, was Garrett worth the price, Agent Ward?"

He wasn´t looking at her anymore, but rather through her; the textbook faraway stare of somebody trying to gain a measure of distance from a situation. May supposed it was answer enough. She would not get one word from him today, and probably not tomorrow, but she could work with that.


	2. Chapter 2

The Playground was build over four levels with tiny individual bedspaces on top and a comfortable good-sized living area on the third floor. The kitchen nearby was well stocked, the bathrooms reasonably big and bright. The second floor was offices, the biggest of which Coulson appropriated as soon as he put his foot inside. All of the first floor was dedicated to a gigantic sitting area that moonlighted as a war room with its state-of-the-art holotable and a frankly unnecessary number of displays. May wandered about, checking for supplies, entrances and escape routes, and wondering how much time would pass before they'd be forced out of this new safe heaven again. Skye and Simmons took to decorating the living area with such an obvious posttraumatic fervor that nobody had the heart to call them on it. Tripplett disappeared the day after arriving, set to establish a line of communications with the Cube as a form to jumpstarting a small network. What should have been good news ended up in an angry lecture from Coulson about the earning of trust and possibilities of more sleeper agents in their ranks. Everybody was frail about the edges, and finally relaxing after a week on the run did not make anything easier. In fact, the inactivity was making everything worse. Waiting for news about Fitz. Waiting to safely reconnect to the rest of the once mighty intelligence network. Waiting for more Deathloks to knock on their door.

May had been the one to come up with that particular worry.

"How do we know it was the only facility they had?" She had asked after Coulson was done drilling Tripp, and Koenig was done closing the hangar door behind him. Phil looked like he had not slept at all the previous night.

"They were doing their military demonstrations there, it stands to reason it was their flagship complex. Besides, Skye's hack does not show anything else".

"They would not network with one another. I know you do not want to hear about it, and even less about the possible uses the Deathlok project might still have, but you know they'd do backups of every successful discovery they'd stumble upon. Hard backups, as we have already seen. There have to be more facilities somewhere. "

"That right now lie low. So let them lie low. We do not have the recourses."

"There might be more incentives programs."

"What do you want me to do about it, May?" It was a rare occurrence, seeing Coulson snap, and a good measure of how the situation was getting to him. "We do not know where they are. We do not know if they are obliterated, scattered, regrouping. We do not know anything about Hydra, except that it almost crushed us. Which is not helpful, at all." They had looked at one another for a long time after that, and neither said another word. Coulson had closed himself in his office afterwards. May had overheard him turning and tossing again that night, then open the door and go for a walk around the lower areas of the compound. She did not mention it the next morning. They all needed their privacy now. They had scored a victory, but the previous defeat was still looming over them.

The storage area did not count as a floor, and could only be accessed through an unassuming stairwell or a pair of very loudly screeching cargo elevators. May first went down there with the goal of running an inventory of firepower in their hands. Koenig, the round and unnaturally happy man that run the Playground, had insisted on showing her the logs, but May had wanted to check for herself. She was the team specialist now, and it was part of her job. She would have to do the same on the Bus too, if only just on principle. Ward's weapon maintenance had always been top notch before the fall, and she did not think he'd do a worse job of it in the few days the Bus had been property of Hydra, but still she felt the need to check and cleanse everything he had touched.

All in all, May was pleased by everything she had found. The cellar was dry and the walls thick and solid, offering no weak access point from that direction. One of the best features was the disposition of the storage cells, and the way they were separated one from another not by walls, but by rows of solid metal bars. It drastically increased visibility and decreased the possibility of any ambush down here, and also served as a wonderful containment unit for any enemy combatants they'd happen to have along with them. May might have beaten Ward to a pulp, but she did not want to take any chances by having to do it again. Koenig was quick to install two videocamaras on the walls outside the selected area, and two more concealed ones on the way to the stairs. Ward's foot was still a bloody, but thankfully uninfected mess, mangled enough to prevent him from pulling any of the fancier escaping moves, but all the same May had instructed Koenig to keep him shackled to one of the bars until she had the opportunity to test the solidity of his improvised cell.  
"Food and water two times a day, painkillers if he looks like he needs them. That's all. Aside from that, I don't want to see you on that level. And if he ever says anything to you, I want to know immediately, and verbatim. Understood?"

"Thank you".

"What?"

"He said thank you. Yesterday. I brought him a book." Koenig shrugged at May's withering stare. "You only just said it right now, I did not know I wasn't supposed to do that. It's downright creepy down there."

"He killed you brother", was all she could say. Koenig stared back at her with his benign expression without answering. Not for the first time in the last few hours, May wondered if maybe he was some kind of robot.

"Don't come down here outside of the meal times. And make sure everybody else stays as far away as it goes".

Nobody was allowed to come down. May had made her point extensively clear and everybody was quick to nod their agreement, even if the true reason only registered with Coulson. He and May had shared another of those long, pregnant stares. She could tell he was not happy, but he also never said any different, and one of the specialities was to read between the lines. Skye had rolled her eyes and muttered how she had had enough of Ward to last a lifetime. Simmons got a pinched look on her face and stalked off. May waited until the kitchen was clear, got a couple of towels and a big jug of water, informed Koenig that she needed his assistance for a short while and made her way down. The newborn SHIELD was operating blind right now, and Coulson could not afford that.

Ward had not been stuck down there for long, yet, but even a day of solitary confinement and restriction of movement had certain influence on a man's psyche. Even the most resilient of prisoners could not avoid getting both restless and tired, which was a rather fertile combination that only waited to find an outlet. Some would rage, some would bargain, some would spew long and elaborated stories in their own defense or accuse real or imaginary third parties. Some would cry. No-one would usually confess, yet. That part rarely came from within; a nice and hard external prompting was usually needed.

Ward did not rage, nor did he bargain, and May had not really expected any elaborated stories. Any of the other reactions, she would have welcomed. Specially the rage. An argument could be made that he was just ripe for it: strong cocksure guy beaten down by a woman older than himself in front of someone he imagined could be his girl. But Ward just stood up, perfectly quiet, as soon as May walked up to him. Short haircut, neat appearance and clothes (before now, at least), big eager eyes. A fucking poster boy for any and all intelligence agency. Skye had had a good point about Hitler youth, though.

She left the items she had brought near the corner of the cell where a sandwich wrapped in brown paper and a plastic bottle of water lay, untouched. Apparently Koenig had taken to heart her short and graphic explanation about why plates and kitchen utensils were not allowed. She then backed up to a safe distance and leveled her barrel at Ward. "Turn around, keep your hands behind your back. In case you are wondering, this is an icer. The only thing your resistance will buy you is a headache and the humiliation of being manhandled like a sack of waste, again."

He obeyed wordlessly, and she nodded at Koenig and watched attentively as the plump man reattached the manacles as to free Ward from the bar while still tying his hands together behind him. After that, he opened the door and entered the cell, a metallic chair trailing behind him. May hoped it was sturdy enough. They did not exactly have all the right tools to deal with Ward here. They should have sent him to the Fridge, she thought for the tenth time that day. The guards there would have known what to do, and how to do it. But Ward and Garrett had ravaged the facility and shot the guards, and wasn't it ironical that now he was stuck in here?

"A little further from the wall", she instructed Koenig.

After the chair was positioned properly, she curtly gestured at Ward to come and sit there. There was something deeply satisfying in watching him watching her every move wordlessly, come to all the right conclusions, and despite it all comply. It took Koenig some time to satisfactory secure his already bound hands to the back of the chair. His legs were secured too, because May did not fancy a kick to the gut if Ward finally decided he could not bear the consequences of his actions meekly anymore. After that, Koenig was free to go, which May made sure he did. Ward was looking at his knees, but made eye contact as soon as she came back inside and closed the barred door. Lights were dim in this part of the cellar, but having a harsh light overhead was a topic they both did not need to participate in.

"I want your info on the Deathlok project, and on what Garrett planned to do with all the enhanced soldiers after he juiced up himself". Ward had to know if there were more buyers, and that could lead them to more Deathloks.

Ward seemed to only have two facial expressions since his capture. There was taciturn, and there was indifferent. Right now, it was the former. May had worried that he was too damaged to speak up, but since he had apparently articulated a thank you of all things to Koenig, interrogation was a go. "You know, Coulson believes I am losing my time here, because it's starting to look like you did not have the slightest idea of Garretts plans. Any of them. You literally were there just to shoot people for him. Like a garbage man."  
Pride and ego down interrogation. Black Widow's favorite. Worked best on the middle ranks of any terrorist organization, powerful and reckless, prideful in their strength and their hit count. Accuse them of a weakness, and they will go out of their way to prove you wrong.

"OK, so you really don't know. Do you care to tell me what exactly are we looking at, here? Did you not know that he had a plan, or did you not know what plan was that?"  
Ward's taciturn expression closed off some more, but he didn't say a word. Wanted to, by the looks of it, but still didn't. Never start talking, no matter how much sense the retort might make at the time. Never open your mouth, because there will be no closing it. An insult would lead to a threat, and that would lead to namedropping of associates who would rain vengeance on the captor. A taunt would be turned against you (never on top, Agent Ward), would in turn make you angry, would make you slip. A curse would turn into a plea, into a please no stop, into what do I have to do. These were the directives, and Ward was double trained in these things by Hydra and SHIELD both. May was slowly discovering just how freakishly good he was at following instruction. It was worth a shot, though, considering that it was the only non-violent option that remained.

"Are you planning on just staying there? You look like you are happy to be in prison. You are not even trying to escape. Will your Hydra friends not take you in you've been beaten up by a woman?"

Romanoff could get so much just playing with some deeply ingrained misogyny, and Ward had spewed out some nasty shit in their last fight. Curiously, he had never come off to May as the type before, which was quite a feat. She was always on the lookout for it, and more so assembling a team with two specialists. Nobody in SHIELD was stupid enough to be an ass to the Cavalry in her face, but there were other damning hints. Talking with the team leader one on one a bit too often, pushing for one's ideas a little too insistently, making sure to be the first to speak every damn time. Ward has done none of those things, had delegated in action often and agreeably enough. And even taking into account that he was a damn good liar, misogyny was a headspace that could not really be hidden because it was never perceived as a negative trait.

Ward did not comment on the taunt, nor on some others that followed, which was both a clever and a damning choice. If May felt like soul searching, she'd have to admit she had come down here hoping to all Asgardian deities she would not have to proceed further at all. Better, softer, slower interrogation techniques were so much more useful than open violence. Build a rapport, find a lose thread, pull on it and take your time to disentwine, and in the end you will have a solid rope that will lead you somewhere. Tear down the knot with pliers, and you won't even recognise what you've got.

"Last chance, Ward. You know what I will do right after this". The air seemed to get a little bit colder at these words, but May could have sworn that he just shrugged his shoulders at the implied threat. He was staring at his knees again, and looked for all the world like he was wondering why she was being slow in getting to the enhanced interrogation techniques. "I know what was in your file. I have read it through and through even before you were vetted. A seven level agent holds out for about fifteen seconds before tapping out. You taped out at nine, were given a redo, and taped out at eight. It's not even a shot at your bravado. I am giving you one last chance. No matter how much I hate you, I will not enjoy it. But I will do it. Think of it as a measure of how desperate you've made us, and how deep your betrayal has gone."

He had of course already seen what she had brought with her. And he was taking out a page of SHIELD's textbook on stress control in hostile environment, breathing very slowly, all his muscles going lax, awareness slowly slipping away. May slapped his head to the side, harsh and brutal, so that he would look at her, so that he'd wake up.

"Stop it, Ward. Stop it now. Don't make me destroy you for an allegiance you don't even have. Because once I start, in under two minutes you'll be ready to do anything to make it end, and you'll tell me a thousand lies, but I will not stop until you pass out and piss yourself three times over and are cringing on the floor howling out for your precious John. And then, after you have come to your senses and thought long and hard about me doing it to you all over again, only then, I will allow you to give me that intel."

She prided herself on her self control, but right now she was so angry - at Ward for being so uttely, illogically stubborn, at Coulson for not saying anything, at herself - that she could not even see straight. Up this close and personal, the treat did not only blur with reality in Ward's mind, as intended, but in her own as well. This was Bahrain all over, where her mind had to be detached from the body so she could do what she was tasked to do.

May waited for a heartbeat, than added him an extra precious few seconds. Stood behind him, put a hand on Ward's shoulder, felt him cringe minutely under the pressure of it.

"Last chance. Just take it. It'll be hard, but worth it."

He laughed then, or maybe not, but there was an ugly choking sound coming from him and he jerked once, trying to knock her hand off. May tipped the chair backwards, and making him fall down to the floor. Went to fetch the towel, soaked it through, covered his face in one efficient move. Kept pouring from the jug with one hand, the other pressing down on him to limit all his squirming. By now, gravity had filled his nostrils and the back of his throat with liquid. It did not hurt as such, of course, which is why half the agencies of the world claimed it was not a torture. They were right, of course; it was so much worse that that.

There was not an ounce of fat in him, and in the seconds when he first tried to keep still May could easily tell how that heart was skipping wildly. Ward's hands were chained at the back and crushed by their combined weights, and he could not get them free for anything. He still started to try ten seconds in, straining a couple of times and then quickly escalating in panic and strength. By fifteen seconds he was struggling against every restraint in a reaction of unabridged fear, and May could not help but think that, he had used a half of this at Cybertech, he would have crushed her then and there. His heart was hammering under her hand so quick she could not tell one beat from the next.

By thirty seconds she let up, checked the breathing and the color of the skin. By waterboarding the water never did completely block the airways, so Ward would not suffocate, not really. But just the trickles of the liquid into the nose and down the throat were enough to activate all the gag reflexes. Caught in a primitive, animal knowledge that something was completely wrong, the body could not help but clam up on its own accord, and fight uselessly while releasing wave after wave of stress hormones. Even people who could perfectly hold their breath underwater reacted just like everybody, because it wasn't about holding breath; not when the water had already broken in.

She poured, stopped, let him take three unimpeded breaths and palmed his cheek to somewhat bring him back into reality, then poured some more. Stopped again, five breaths this time, perfectly chronometered though he never truly noticed that. Thing with not breathing was, he was also not able to scream. There was just a low keening sound coming from under the cloth when the water was falling, and a wheezing when he was allowed to breath, and the metallic rattle of cuffs being jerked around and twisted on themselves. She would go on just for another minute, May decided, and not a damned second more. He would be beyond ready after that. He looked beyond ready now, except he was not even trying to say anything. Did Hydra train him better, after he failed that SHIELD resilience test twice? Or was there a major water trigger in Ward's mind somewhere? Too much or too little, how was she supposed to know? She was so not OK with this, she could not even see straight for blurring in her eyes, and she had to tell herself that this was the guy who made Fitzsimmons drown. She could be right or wrong, but Ward, he was a murderer, so anyway he was much worse. They sunk so deep in that container, it would have taken minutes to reach the surface, and they were not trained for that, they weren't ops, they had been scared, and scarred, and they fought against it...

He still had not said a word, but to May it did not matter. She could not go on anymore. She threw the cloth across the cell, pulled the chair up, freed his legs.

"That's it. Come on, it's over. Ward, hear me?"

When he completely failed to acknowledge the development, she knew which of the two extreme she had landed on. Cursing, May made him come down to the floor until he was laying on his side, and rubbed at his arms, harshly and to the point, trying to snap him back. He fought at that, a vicious short-lived mess that ended as he figured that this degree of freedom allowed him to half roll, half crawl away from until he was pressed to the corner.

"It is OK, you are OK. It's over, over, look at me."

He didn't. May made sure to approach him slowly this time, but when she came up he just made a chocking sound and shuddered with his full body. She checked his eyes (unfocused), the neck area (same grade of swelling as this morning). Both wrists were a mess and bleeding sluggishly, but she could not remove the cuffs; right now, she he could too easily kill her if he lashed out. By then he did seem like he was a little more aware, eyes tracking sluggishly and whizzing dying down. May sat by him until his heartbeat slowed down to under hundred and twenty, uncuffed him, secured the cell and went in search of Koenig in order to inquire after a thermal blanket. She started vomiting before she got to the stairwell.


	3. Chapter 3

"May."  
"Sir?"  
"Is everything all right?"

Leave it to Coulson to figure out something May herself was only contemplating telling him. He'd know what she had been up to today, she realised, but she had also assumed a newly appointed Director of SHIELD would not want to take any part in it. She had made her peace with being on her own. It was not May's place to question him, and it was decidedly not her place to blame him for assigning her a mission that was actually not a mission at all. There would never be an official report on it, only pages on pages of Ward's confessions without even his name on, intelligence that will seem to have been generated from nowhere. And she could have said no. Hell, she could have ignored all the faint exchanges. Pretended it wasn't bothering them, hiding in the shared silence. Pretended they weren't both thinking the same thing.

Violence was never a first line solution. That had always been a SHIELD directive, even if in the last ten years nobody except Coulson himself seemed to much adhere to it anymore. And as much as May had gladly broken Quinn's face once, she was perfectly aware that it hadn't been a right decision. Contrary to the popular belief, she was not a stranger to lashing out in hot bright anger, if the situation warranted it. She just collected herself afterwards, tended to her knuckles and never rued what was done. Still, elaborated plans of torture and intimidation were something different, something insidious and soul-chilling, and May hadn't ever thought she would find herself steeling for this, some day. Of course, Ward was pretty far from being just a prisoner. He was a soldier, an enemy combatant who had willingly found his way into their lines. He had known exactly what would come for him if he was ever found out. How long has he been sleeping inside SHIELD, anyway? He had been Garrett's trainee, both had talked about it happily enough, but at what moment of Ward's training did Garrett reveal himself to him? What did he see in that fresh out of the Academy rookie that Ward's instructors have all overlooked? His record had been shining, but he had had a rather bland personality, for a bad guy. A rule sticker and a follower. Always "yes, sir, no sir". Was that why Garrett chose him at all?

"Yes, everything is fine".  
"Were you planning to work downstairs today too?"  
This was how they were referring to it, now? Coulson looked at her a little longer then usual, but May could not rue it, not when Phil was coming through for her in yet another of his wonderful ways. His slightly smiling, slightly concerned expression told her that he knew what she had been thinking, and that he wasn't about to leave her alone to dry, at all.  
"Every day as long as necessary", she said.  
"I thought we could go together today. The good cop usually goes in right after the bad."

Yesterday, she had felt deeply unsettled until well into the night, and she could freely admit it. Feelings were not a weakness, and May never disallowed herself to have them. But they had to be worked through, identified and appeased so that they would never bottle up, and never uncoil in inopportune distraction moment. And so, she had gone upstairs and done her usual workup until her stomach was not churning anymore. That sickly, disquieted feeling was still there afterwards, and she examined it further while doing tai-chi exercises until her head was completely clear, and her mind had settled just so.

"Ward would never believe you're his good cop. He will be more scared of you than he already is of me."  
"I do not know if he is capable of being scared. I am not sure there is a scrap of soul in him left. But if there is, he will be a hell lot more agreeable today than he was yesterday. And in a week, he'll believe exactly what we want him to believe."  
"So you'd what, sweet talk to him and offer him a deal? He won't fall for it. He burned all his bridges and he knows it."  
"I am not going offer him anything. I am just going down there because I have had a really shitty week and really could do with seeing some regret in his eyes."  
"Good luck in finding it."  
Coulson smiled warmly and shook his head. This was why May loved the man. He was so serene, so composed, and so human.  
"It will be there," he promised, "if only at getting caught by us."

Ward has been quiet all night. May had checked the monitors regularly, knowing how delicate the first hours alone with one`s thoughts could be. At first, he had sat in the corner she left him in, but after a while she could see him walking the perimeter of the cell, going very slowly through stretching exercises in order to work off the effects of the shock to later drop into whatever part of his usual physical routine he was able to complete without proper gear. As far as she could tell, he went through with it three times before settling down again. The last time May checked on him before calling it a night, he was sitting with his back propped against the bars, arms resting on his drawn knees, head resting in his arms so that his face was completely hidden away. There was no way to know if he was sleeping.

They made their ways downstairs, May running possible scenarios of their next interrogation, Coulson chatting pleasantly about the food stocked in the Playground. By the time they came up to the cell, Ward was standing at the front of his cell at perfect parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. He was looking right at Coulson like they were still on the Bus and he was waiting for his next mission, not a flinch from him at Coulson's less than friendly scowl, face a mask of patient expectation. He looked like a perfect little soldier. Why did he even choose to join SHIELD?

Coulson stopped in front of the cell looking as he always did, relaxed and with a little smile on his lips. He did not pay Ward a lot of attention first; instead he surveyed the video setup and the surroundings. There was a new untouched sandwich in the corner. The bottle of water was thankfully empty. May made a note to have Koenig write up a strict list of Ward's actually eaten meals; it would not do to let him get away from them that easily.

Phil took his precious time observing the setup, and all the while Ward's eyes had not moved away from the face of his ex commanding officer. He was acting more wound up by the silence directed at him - for a given value of wound up one could read from a specialist, anyway – than by May's threats of yesterday.

"So tell me, was Mr. Petersen the only involuntary Deathlok of the lot, or were there more coerced into doing Garrett's bidding?"

The question and the offhand delivery caught May by surprise. She was expecting something more along the lines of Phil's previous moral lecturing. It had been glorious to behold. It would be completely lost on Ward, but hearing Phil rant would be pretty cathartic all the same.

"There were eleven cells in Cybertech", Coulson went on. "We freed ten prisoners, and thankfully all family members of the employees are accounted for. But we are still not sure if there could have been anyone left behind. If you friends are looking to disappear for a while, these people could simply get disposed of."  
"I can't answer that."  
May found it a fascinating little bit of insight into Ward's psyche that he had to catch himself before he ended that sentence with a "sir". Phil, rightly fascinated in his own right, came up a step closer.

"Come again?"  
"I don't know if there were any more hostages."  
"Well, so you can speak. May here wasn't very sure. I feel like this is a good first try, considering your vocal cords, but the answer is not very helpful. You have not exactly been forthcoming up to now. Opening your mouth only to deny involvement will not get you any points."  
"I did not deny involvement," Ward had the audacity of looking vaguely irritated, "I said I do not know."  
"Were you blind and deaf as you flew in the same plane as Garrett over half the globe?"  
"Garrett did not have any more hostages. If anyone else was running a parallel op…"  
"What did he have, then?"  
It really was the million dollar question. For a second there, May imagined she could see everything they wanted, all the intel going though Ward's head and being catalogued into tight little numbered boxes... And then put into a steel safe and thrown out into the ocean.  
"I can't tell you what you want to know".

Coulson's face darkened. He came closer to the cell, so close that he could easily get a handful of Ward's shirt and bang his face against the bars if he would so want. Which, strictly speaking, meant Ward was able to do the same move. There was a night-night gun at Coulson's waist, and from the way Ward has not looked in that direction even once, May just knew how well aware he was of it. She moved minimally behind Phil, ready to take action.

"Keep that thought, we'll see how well it works for you. Because you will. You so much will, you will be grateful to spill everything by the time we are done here, you spineless backstabbing bastard."  
And Ward must have suddenly come in touch with his inner death wish, because instead of shutting up and taking it, he very calmly moved his head from side to side.  
"Things I know, none will be any help to you right now. You have a single primary objective: establishing a new base of operations after a ground zero defeat. You are basically still on the run. You do not want be hitting Garrett's hidden places."  
"It's not for you to decide".  
"It's basic training. You do not split up and leave half of your people unprotected, just to go hunting after some cash and low level firepower."  
"I said, it's not for you to decide". Thing about Phil was, he never screamed. He did not need to, he could be perfectly terrifying talking in his normal voice. "You don't get to talk about this like you are planning a SHIELD mission, you don't get to call yourself an operative. You have forfeited your right to speak up, to be heard, to decide anything, and you are this close to forfeit your last chance at being treated as a human being. You could help us."  
"Phil…" May put a hand on his shoulder in order to make him back up, then turn around and face her. "Good cop, remember?"  
"There is no good to be found here". Coulson all but spit out. He turned around again, facing the cell. "Your answer?"  
Ward glanced up to him and then down, and finally at May. He knew precisely where the wrong answer would lead him.  
"I cannot help you," he said again.  
"Fair enough. But then, do not expect help yourself."

The next time May came down, she found Ward sitting with his head thrown back and face not hidden for a change, legs stretched and arms lose. He even had the cheek to manage a little greeting smile at her, and feign an interest at her arrival.  
"Up. Hands behind your back."  
He hesitated then, the mask of confidence falling just a little. Or maybe she simply wanted to believe that. It could not have been more than quarter of a second.

The third time she came down, he started fidgeting as soon as she secured his arms, and did not seem to even realise it. May did not ask any questions. There was no need for it; they had an understanding. Ward knew what was expected; the ball was in his court.

She managed to not throw up by the fourth time.

He did not come willingly to be tied down by the sixth. May was expecting it and shot him with an icer, tied him up and left him there for an hour just to stew. He wasn't struggling when she came back, but his bloody wrists she could tell that he had been.

She kept expecting him to actually pull something, day after day. Start fighting her, start figuring some ways to get out of the cage. He had to realise that if he allowed May to continue much longer she could end up killing him, or drive him mad. Self preservation was an instinct, an order of nature, and Ward was a survivor by nature. All specialists were, and he even had repeatedly told Skye so. The poor girl had vehemently protested against Coulson's orders to write down all their conversations word for word, but she needn't have worried. She had been admirable in her compassion first, and later in her level headedness. As for Ward's words to her, they generally made little to no sense, and May was almost sorry to have forced the girl to relive them needlessly. One thing stood out, though, which was such a mind-boggling screw up that May had gone right to Phil's office with the paper.

"Did you know it?"  
"Yes."  
"Then why the hell was he even considered? Who vetted him?"  
"He passed all evaluations. Not with flying colours, but he passed. And his social skills tests were always consistent…"  
"And nobody thought to look further that a test? He beat the shit out of his younger brother, because his older brother did the same to him. He burned down his house as a teenager. Did nobody thought that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the best candidate for a weapon specialist? What level was the unredacted file?"  
"Eight."  
"So that was how I missed it."  
"… and Garrett got a hold of him. It seems to be the most probable way. John Garrett always loved explosions, so maybe…"

May squared her shoulders.

"I will lead with saying that I hope to never stop following you, but if this agency we are building anew ever does something like that, you will have my resignation. A watchful eye in case he ever decided to buy himself a firearm should have been the full extent of SHIELD's involvement with someone with this background. That, and an anonymous call to social services."

Coulson, speechless for once, was smart enough to nod once in agreement.

The next day she came down, Ward was leaning on the wall clearly awaiting her. Arms crossed at the chest, a closed off posture. May did not spare much time to the wishful thinking that today would be the day when he'd be agreeable and talk. Still, some life had returned to his eyes after being all but gone as the imprisonment slowly took his tall of him. He hadn't been in full control of his body language for the last couple of days: face openly ridden with tension, lips cracked because he kept worrying at all the cuts when he was left alone. When May would leave, he mostly huddled in the corner in any number of defensive positions, and if he was asleep he startled badly at the sound of the opening door. But through it all he never, ever said anything. And didn't it just make May see red. A normal person would have acquiesced to their questioning already. They knew his crimes, he literally could not make it worse by spilling everything. They were SHIELD, the good guys, and he had spent enough time with them to know it. Know Coulson. Know his dedication, his compassion and his drive. All he could do was earn leniency on their part. Could Ward not see that? Why would he not even try for a way out?

"What do you want from me?" His voice was rougher now, hoarse from the disuse and swelling. Simmons had walked May through basic care and things to look out for, explaining how the first days weren't necessarily the worst as the swelling took time to set in. May knew that she wondered about Ward and that Skye did, too, but they never asked her and she took it as a blessing.

"You know perfectly well what I want."  
"I won't tell you anything."  
It came out almost childish, half defiant and half forlorn.  
"You will."  
Frustration, anger, tiredness. He seemed constantly exhausted now in a forsaken, downbeat way, and it reminded May the way he all but crashed after destroying his punch bag in the aftermath of the Berserker mission.  
"It won't help you any."  
"I will decide what it will help. Why are you hanging onto it, if it's so completely worthless?"  
"It's not to me."

Ward gazed to the floor, arms clasped tight around him, misery coming off him in waves. For a little while, he actually looked like he had just forgotten May was there. She moved to finally open the door and he recoiled away.

"Suppose I…" vague gesture. Clearly unwilling to even say it. May stilled again, to better pay attention. This was what she's been waiting for, it had to be. "What happens after that?"  
"You will be locked up," she said without hesitation.  
Coulson would never stand for anything harsher than that, no matter how well deserved. And May herself… she would have gladly killed Ward in a fight, but she would not become his executioner.  
He nodded like he had expected it.  
"How long?"  
"How long you think?"  
He scowled.  
"It is a fair question."  
"I have another one for you. How many people did you kill?  
Hand and her two minions, for sure. Some of the people in the Fridge. First Clairvoyant, first Koenig…  
"Over a hundred?"  
Delivered with a perfectly straight face, too. Counting kills for SHIELD and Hydra all together. May straightened up.  
"Your gall is sickening. You will be locked up until you die."

It was a better deal than old SHIELD would ever offer to a sleeper double agent, but going by Ward's reaction it could have been a punch right to the gut much harder than any May had had the pleasure to deliver. He did not look like someone whose life has just been undeservely spared by the enemy, but rather like a person whose world had just come crashing over him, bewildered and scared stiff, unwilling to believe the information. He stared to the floor, hands closed tight in fists, eyes frowning in deep concentration as if this was still a problem he could solve. May waited out. There was no solving this for Ward; his second chance had lasted months and had featured five people he could have chosen to confide into.

A full minute passed by, or maybe more, with Ward not saying anything. May waited. If being locked up was scaring him the most, than by all means, she'd let him sweat on all implications. She would have waited even more, but then he breathed out deeply once and nodded, shoulders uncoiling and head coming up and down in a short nod.  
"Understood".

And that had been all from him that night. Ward did not speak again, to offer intel nor to ask some further questions. He also did he speak the next. Whatever May would throw at him, he did not fight it anymore. There were no further revelations, no offers and no bargaining, in fact he'd barely react to her at all. After another week, it literally felt like he had closed some secret door and threw away the key. May had heared him talk about compartimentalising long ago, and even then it had seemed like an unhealhy coping strategy. She never realised he was able to go to such an extreme. Reactions - even flinches and defensive movements - were missing, emotions up to fear and anger had been washed away until Ward's entire personality seemed gone, leaving a hole that May were unable to reach, to measure and to fill away.

"I am sure you have done everything you could. You are my right hand woman, May, but you are not Natasha Romanoff".  
"I am afraid I did too much to him", May answered quite bluntly. Coulson had frowned and sighed and frowned some more when she announced that she would be leaving Ward alone, but he did fight her on this one.  
"I am afraid I asked too much of you", he said instead. "This had been ugly all around, May, so please try to not blame yourself. You might think of it as a mistake, but I am sure you did everything you could."

Coulson was wrong about that, she thought as the night went away and the morning came, and she had yet to close her eyes. The mistake did not lay in all the things she did to Ward, but rather in the only one she did not do.


	4. Chapter 4

There were five SHIELD bases left intact in the end, but only three have remained hidden from authorities well enough to still be serviceable. Gunfight and helicopter fire tended to attract attention of the military, and when Talbot and his goons came, all was lost. It was all right, though. Where the new SHIELD was most lacking was not in bases, but in agents trustworthy and able to run them. Not even a ten percent still remained active and loyal. Some had been Hydra; some had been killed in the takeover. The Academy kids all had scurried away. Word spread around that the most bright where applying for a job at Stark Industries. But all that was expectable, and not that worrying. The thing that bothered May the most was how many agents with years of experience just left. Disillusioned, no longer heroes of the winning side, unwilling to find themselves on the wrong side of the law. She could only imagine how much it had to grate on Coulson. After the full assessment, he had just smiled sadly and tried to joke about how Hydra had actually done them a huge favour.

"We were getting sloppy, May. Comfortable, fat and slow. But on the brighter side, I will be honoured to work with these who still remain".

After that bomb had dropped May wondered for some time if Simmons would also be quickly gone. She spent her time visiting Fitz and closing herself in her Playground lab. It was good sized and well stocked, but no fancier than anything she would be offered at MIT and Stark's. May would truly understand it, if she packed up and went. She was a loyal girl but also a pragmatic, sweet but not sweet enough to hesitate in doing what she wanted and never spare a thought to everyone's opinion on her. Still, day after day, she stayed. Maybe she just hoped that SHIELD would get her a fully developed Deathlok to dissect.

Skye stayed, of course. Coulson was so very touched by her loyalty, he literally had stars in his eyes when talking about it. May could not avoid noting that she also had nowhere else to go. May briefly considered asking Ward about his supposed info on Skye's family, going as far as imagining how a one on one meeting between them would go. She had accepted her own inability to reach him, be the girl could maybe pull him from the bottom of whatever well he have chosen to drown himself in. In the end, decency won out; Skye was way too innocent to witness the new May-made version of Ward.

After an afternoon of tai-chi exercises and hard thinking, she mentally amended decency for discomfort.

Two tiresome weeks of almost complete inaction rolled by, and thankfully some cleaning missions started to turn up. Tripplet and May flew back to Providence, spending twenty hours motionless among the snow to make sure that the military was gone and base was now abandoned. By dawn of the next day they sneaked inside, and came out an hour later with the most useful heavy duty weapons, some electronic stuff and a cute chemset that Tripp thought may cheer Simmons up.

The next week Skye's worm, trojan, virus or whatever it was pinged once over in Australia and May did the long trip, this time all alone. She came back one week later with little to no intel, a nasty wrist sprain, and the blackest of all moods. She had so hoped that the people that had set off Skye's surveillance would lead them to some Hydra. Weeks after the reveal, they were no closer to their first concrete lead. No names, no trails, and no promising locations. It turned out the "Hydra cell" was just a bunch of military guys who had wised up in the world wide confusion and stolen stuff from Cybertech before it could be properly dealt with, sealed and confiscated. They had then proceeded to form their own clandestine agency, acting as if changing continents was quite enough to have thrown off all tails. Their blond and tattooed leader was walking around their camp smashing stuff with the goddamned Berserker staff that must have taken the Cuba recovery crew hours to dig out. May had tried so hard to forget just how pathetic they all were and take the mission seriously enough. And then, everything just had to go and blow up. She made contact, playing an independent interested party, but some of the guys must have been with Talbot at Cybertech and recognised her as "that chic with the nail gun". They had ganged up on her, tied her up and spent the night reminding her that she was a weak little helpless woman surrounded by strong young horny males. It was a pity that May was indeed not close to Romanoff in the interrogation department. Black Widow would have struck gold here, but May just got bored and pissed off. She sprained her wrist, slit some meaty throats and was on her way before the dawn broke. She took the staff, too. Having to haul its weight across the desert while making sure it was properly wrapped up at all times accounted for two thirds of her fuming mood as she came back to base.

Due to unfortunate positioning while being tied by these goons, the wrist she had to sprain had been her right, and Coulson made her take some days for full recovery. He had been planning on a personal visit to the Cube, to see if he could borrow some people from there. Playground wasn't a big base, but it was undermanned for a Headquarters with only four (semi)real agents and Koenig. Skye and Simmons were to go with him, too, presumably to see if they clicked together with the potential additions and in an effort to cheer them up. May argued that she was their only pilot, but Coulson just waived and determined that they would take the scenic route and get some fresh air. There was no arguing with him. They took communicators, icers and some little handy EMPs, and were on their way. May got to stay in the compound, doing tai-chi and avoiding Koenig's wholehearted attempts at socializing.

She was just finishing her morning shower when the breach alarm lit on. There weren't any shrilly sounds, just a discreet ping and a strategically placed little flashing light in every room. May left the water on, slipped out of the stall, dried herself off with three efficient long swabs. Her shirt and slacks were on in half a second. No easy access to the body armour, only an icer for a weapon. She got herself a median-sized ceramic knife while ghosting through the kitchen, and deemed herself as ready as she needed to be.

The war room proved to be useful in that the displays were now showing the entrance to the base, a hole the size of a man in it, the thick metal doors literally vaporised. A missile of some sorts, then. Nine people came through, some holding machine guns. As May watched, they split in two groups of four and five. The smaller group was heading upstairs towards the leaving area and May, but it was the second one that made her blood run cold. They were walking directly to cargo elevators that led to the basement with, among others, all SHIELD's weapons and fancy alien inventions. It was already troubling May that they had heavy firepower. If they got their hands on Coulson's gun, there would no stopping them at all.

She stepped back into the kitchen and settled down behind the isle in the middle. Two guys came her way, checked the place from the threshold but finally moved on to search the living quarters. May crawled lightly around to keep them in her view. She could take them easily, but not without noise. And then she would be fighting here upstairs long enough for basement party to find their prize. That is, if they have not found it already, directed by Ward in exchange for his freedom or even in spite.

The situation was ready to explode one way or another. May ghosted through headquarters to the cargo area at good pace, successfully avoiding being seen. The guys were military all right; there was no smoothness and no subterfuge to them. Still, they were clearly searching for people; May hoped that Koenig was good enough an agent to stay hidden, or else SHIELD would soon be one more member short. She had no time to look for him, however.

By the time she reached the elevators the entire area was empty, the party of five having made their way downstairs. May put the knife to good use, shortcutting the electricity in the elevators so that the only way back up was through the stairs.

The lights downstairs were blinking lazily, slowly coming on prompted by the movement sensors. They promptly went off as May cut through the wires at the top of the stairs. Descent was soundless, and she keenly felt the loss of light as she slid down step by step. The layout of the underground level was far from ideal for an all out fight. Still, it was much better than the claustrophobic Bus. The main compound area was basically divided in four lines of shelves containing crates big and small. Relevant weapons were all stocked inside several independent cells much like the one Ward was being held in, at the far end of the basement, and would not be found without some intensive search. This would give May time to work her way through the compound and hopefully take out some strays. Darkness worked in her favour here; in absence of main lights, there was only the solitary bulb illuminating Ward's prison cell for the entire area. Koenig had installed it after realising that he was not prone to move enough to activate the other lights. May could now see the stripes of light it threw down the aisles from afar. She could hear movement ahead of her, the men moving but not speaking to each other, walking the corridors confidently enough that their steps echoed in the half darkness, stopping time and again to open containers and inspect their bounty.

As the raiding committee advanced into the depth of the compound, May became aware of the one thing that was missing from the picture. There was no pause in their steps, no exclamations and no questioning of an unknown man sitting in the only illuminated cage of the basement. No sound from the prisoner asking to be let out. May had assumed they have come for the weapons, but what if they had actually come for Ward?

Was all his time spent in captivity a ruse again? Had he not tried to run because he was expecting this? Or, even worse, could he have led these men in here? It was a terrifying thought. It meant that Ward had finally found a way out of his cell, and had been to the top levels. Sent some kind of signal even as May showered, or slept tonight. Who knew where he was now. Leagues away from here maybe, but probably right behind her. When Lorelei and he were on the run from Lady Sif, May had explained to Coulson that Ward was not the kind to actually run. He would buy time, distract and then invade the enemy home base while nobody was looking.

Step by step, icer on the ready in her right hand and the knife pressed into her left palm, May advanced between the shelves. She changed directions once and again, all the while choosing the deepest shadows the layout allowed her. Nearing Ward´s cell her worst fears all confirmed. The door did not stand open, but there was nobody inside. And meanwhile, ahead of her, a small explosion marked the moment one of the big container was cracked open. It seemed like they had already figured out where all the best weapons were stored.

She peaked around the corner, careful to never leave an open space at her back. She could see just three of them, quickly pulling Phil's favourite toy from its container. None of them seemed to actually lead the little group; they were clearly just tasked with acquisition. The angle and the cover weren't the best. Still, there was nothing for it. May checked again to make quite sure no enemy was approaching from behind. The first shot went off perfectly, and in the confusion of the sound and the fall, the second shot met its target beautifully as well. The third guy ducked down, and instantly became invisible from May's position. She vaulted over a pair of containers to one side, and had just the luck of peripherally notice one of the two soldiers she missed before. The shot was messy and hit him in the shoulder, but that was the beauty of the icers: the man still went down like a sack of bricks.

Three down, two to go. May rolled again, then run and rolled and only stopped after changing aisles twice and backtracking at least fifteen meters back to the entrance. It was a spot from which she could have a direct line of fire if anyone tried to leave the place. She had hoped to completely lose the man with Coulson's tesseract gun, and she probably had, but as luck would have it she was spotted by the last unaccounted for soldier. She tried to gun him before he could raise the alarm, but the shot went wide. A little enough mistake, but from there on her situation became immediately dire. Instead of stealthily set a trap the two remaining guys, now she was just as trapped. All of a sudden she was not cutting their retreat line but sitting in a corner like a duck while two machine guns rained shots at her from two different positions. To make the matters even worse, one of the machine guns stopped and she heard a long whining sound just before wood shards the size of arms came down on her from the top shelf. Another whine, and blue wind was combing through her hair, the cracking energy from the Tesseract washing over her and boiling off her skin. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to avoid crying out. Damn SHIELD for inventing such a weapon; damn Phil for bringing it with them to the Playground. It should have been put into the Slingshot right after Stark and Rogers had ganged up on Fury upon discovering what SHIELD was doing with the Tesseract.

Except that hey, surprise, there was never any Slingshot, and May would now find her end at the hands of two punks with a strike of blind luck and a mass destruction weapon.

She had thrown herself down and covered her head. She peeked just a little, than threw her knife into the shelf over the weapons location. Still no luck; the shelf shuddered and some things came down, but it was mostly edible provisions and a little glass. Which was anticlimactic, but then she did not have any use for the knife anymore. The distraction proved useful to peer some more, but the cover of both guy was way too solid. She would never have an angle. It made no sense to even try.

The cannon of extraterrestrial blue doom would be the end of May, she was sure of it after two more blasts. Even the lead padded crates to her right were slowly melting, giving her a good look at how her body will soon look like. She tried to shift away, but moving did nothing to better her position. The stupid weapon took a long enough to reload, but May´s hands were tied as long as there was a second guy somewhere waiting for her to show herself.

Another whine.

"Just show yourself, you frigid bitch. You are soooo outnumbered. I´ll make you a hot deal. Give you exactly what you have been waiting for."

Bang! The world almost seemed blue now, but the important part was that Maty knew that voice. It was one of the guys she met while in Australia. May pursued her lips and ignored his words. There had to be a way to get out of there.

"Come on, baby, come with us. You are alone in here, and we have come a long way just to…"

The whine started to build up once more, and then there was a loud crack that sounded almost like a gunshot and immediately the blue light went off. The voice shut up and there were no more taunts or movements. May was way too grateful for the reprieve to dwell on the hows and whys. She crawled and rolled and crawled and rolled and finally could stumble away into the forgiving darkness. There was blood welling on her palms, making the icer slippery. The debris around her completely covered the floor, and somewhere along the way she picked a long wooden plank to hold in her left hand. Whatever happened to the tesseract gun, she was almost positive that four people were down, with one still to go. Maybe she had just lucked out, and the contraption simply backfired on its owner.

She paused a little just to catch her breath and then walked a little unsteadily along the aisle, hoping to get a feel on the location of the last one. He had not stayed motionless after shooting with the Tesseract gun stopped being fun. Alone, out of the protection of big numbers, he did not stand a chance. May heard a step, followed it from a distance. She saw the shadow move quickly along, morphing into a man just for a second. She followed it, too. Convinced that she was on the right track, she went cautiously around the corner looking to put an icer into a retreating back, but there was no one inside and the aisle ended right there. Crates piled up at least two meters high on both sides. They were not impossible to climb for May, but a decent obstacle for a foot soldier with preference for machine guns.

Back of her neck tingled; something was completely wrong. The frozen feeling lasted all of a half second and then May was whipping around, icer coming up to point. The man was less then two meters away from her, his own gun at the ready. May pulled the trigger with no aiming. He went down instantly despite May´s doubts. She immediately came closer, weapon on the ready. It was too dark to see the typical crisscrossed pattern of the toxin on his skin, but not enough to miss the darkish wet streak coming from the exit wound on his forehead.

She struggled to see into the corridor behind the fallen man, the one she had just come through. There were mostly shadows and only one clear outline. The polished barrel of a gun that had been pointing at the dead man and was now pointed at her, held in the trademark double-handed grip Agent Grant Ward was known to be specially fond of.


	5. Chapter 5

Please note that a "suicide thoughts" warning will be in effect starting with this chapter. Somewhat conversely, I feel like the really dark stuff that was needed to take the characters to certain emotional starting points is finally behind us.

Everyone at SHIELD knew that Melinda May was an exceptional field agent. Few people ever understood that she was not exceptional because she could hit so hard and aim so true. She was an excellent professional because she knew to read a situation. Whom to take down first so that the others would turn tail after the fall of their leader, how to intercept somebody by allowing them to think they've got away. She could read people. The milliseconds of reaction time she had on others, she knew to use in order to observe. People she had fought against, she could read much better that the average. People she had fought with, for example Ward…

She could not really see him, but she did not need to. His weapons have always been the most important part of him. The way he set his shoulders had an effect on the way he ultimately held his gun – sometimes he tilted his head a little to the side, and other times he tilted the weapon instead. The angles of him could tell a story, and May had learned to understand them as soon as she realised he would not volunteer personal data verbally. Not that she needed such a refined read on him right now. He was doing exactly the same thing he had done as he last talked to Skye, pointing the weapon right at the middle of her bullet-proofed chest. Skye could be excused for not noticing the detail, that with her limited experience with guns pointing her way. She had been scared shitless and still fearless in her trademark, unassuming way, and would have certainly done and said exactly the same things had Ward been resting the cannon against her forehead. But May – May would have never allowed that conversation to take place had Ward truly exhibited the least of violent intentions.

What he was doing now was not in any way subtler than that. The weapon was at the ready, barrel at eye level, but pointing a couple of centimetres away from May's head. For a specialist in the middle of an operation, it was the equivalent of a parade rest between one assault and the next.

And so she kept as still as the dead man at her feet, avoiding the knee jerk reaction of levelling her own weapon in a move that was sure to set Ward off. She was rewarded with deep silence, quiet darkness, and her capacity to painlessly draw in another breath. Why? What was he waiting for, if even he was waiting? A couple of centimetres off to the right, that was all that May had to go on. Everything from one of SHIELD's best snipers. Nothing from a cornered traitor.

She thought about trying for a fight, seeing if she could be quick enough to get him with her icer, and maybe the attackers would find them sometime – one dead, one knocked off – and then be smart enough to finish what May started. She would most likely fail, seeing as her icer was still pointing to the floor, but she could try. She should try. It was the obvious solution. Still, she looked at Ward's gun, counted the seconds of this silent confrontation, rewound their previous encounters and did not move at all.

She was rewarded once again with her continuing existence. Then came a step, and the shadow condensed in the familiar shape making a cautious way toward her own position. Gun at the ready, but not quite pointed at her. Coiled to attack, but not attacking May. Listening up, eyes searching…

It clicked into place.

"The basement is clear".

It seemed like a huge mistake on the surface, informing him that there were no more common enemies, but Ward just nodded and allowed himself to shift the gun a couple centimetres down. His body language was still that of an ally, a couple more steps serving to move slightly to the side and stop completely blocking May's way out of the corridor. She knew now what she had previously done wrong. She and the last of military guys had both played at being the predator, following their bait and walking right into the trap. Ward on the contrary had played the prey, had led them to a dead end and vaulted over crates to double back and corner both. Retrospectively, he must have also gunned down the guy with Coulson's gun, thus liberating her from that pinned down position. Why did he even do it? He could not really be thinking that he would win himself some Phil approval points that way.

As seconds ticked – no more than five could have passed by since the beginning of their eerie showdown – May could see signs of him beginning to tense up, coming out of the ally headspace and closing up in self-protection mode. Ward's shoulders came a little up the same way they did when May opened his cell, then relaxed. The gun came up and levelled with his eyelevel. It was becoming clear that he had not really thought this all the way through, and that whatever Ward's good will toward May was, wherever place it had come from, she was losing it at terrifying pace. He seemed to contemplate just what would happen – would keep happening – to him if he did not pull the trigger right away. How could he have forgotten such a thing in the first place was a mystery to May. Reading body language did not give her insight into actual thoughts. She honestly did not know what any of this hesitation was, coming from him. She knew just one thing, though: she had to bank onto it if she wanted to live, and soon.

She started by carefully clicking back the safety on her icer. A void gesture, as it was no use to her against Ward anyway. That did not get her any reaction, and so she cautiously, carefully – but never warily, never making him think she was afraid of him – bent down to pick the gun off the dead soldier. Doing so could easily be seen as an offensive movement, but then again, she counted on Ward knowing it was not. He still could kill her ten times over if he wanted to, before she got up from the floor.

She checked the weapon, making a point of never pointing anywhere near him. The magazine was almost empty. May bristled and stood up. Ward was still keeping to the side, implicitly avoiding cornering her in the enclosed space. She walked toward him, almost past him, still making a point to not look at him but fleetingly.

"There are at least four other guys upstairs. You know the layout?"

If you wanted somebody to agree with you, you had to start with easy questions, ones you were sure the subject would answer "yes" to. And May wanted it so much. Wanted to live, and even more than that she just did not want to die so uselessly, taken down by her own carelessness and stupidity.

"Yes."

"Go take them down."

Voice steady and reasonable, like she had all the right to give him such an order. A hint of steel to throw him off. Coulson would have a fit about her taking such a risks, but May could actually see no risk at all. She was living on borrowed time, prison guard watched by her prisioner through an eyehole of a gun.

He pivoted perfectly, a hunting dog ordered to go, and was off into the darkness before May could finish describing the full thought process behind her bluffing. Still barefoot, she noted with detached bewilderment that filtered through sheer relief, armed with a pistol that certainly had a half emptied magazine. Oh well. She had talked Ward into letting her go for now, so hopefully she would have some time before he finally decided to snap out of his creepy obedience. If he made himself useful in the process, all the better.

May contemplated the machine gun once again, then put it down and went in search of Phil's dream weapon. There was a rocket launcher out there, ready to make another hole in their walls if the initial assault proved unsuccessful. The Tesseract weapon of doom wasn't hot to touch like any normal earthly weapon fired so many times in a row would be. Nor was it as heavy as May had expected, but certainly huge enough to be really uncomfortable when brought up several flights of narrow steps. The cargo area proved to still be void of any life, except that now there was a body with a broken neck dumped unceremoniously near the blown out entrance. It seemed that the attackers have finally posted a lookout, and also that Ward was indeed proveing himself useful. He had to relish the unexpected opportunity to come out of the cage and play, at least. All seemed to still be quiet in the living quarters, which she took for the sign of him being the professional he was trained to be. It was a promising start, but still very far away from giving May a fluffy feeling. Until this was over, she would consider herself to be dealing with two different hostile parties.

She marched to the opening, peering outside. The truck with the launcher was stationed some twenty meters away. She seized her weapon for equilibrium, weight, stability and inner resistance of the trigger. How was the dispersion range? It was to be her first shot, and at a much larger distance than the two meters Coulson shot Loki from.

Four… no, five shots in quick succession came from somewhere deep in the compound, and were immediately drowned by machine gun fire. Ward did not get them all from the get go, which meant he would now have to work a lot more. The practical, detached part of May found itself wishing they all would kill each other in the end. Ward would surely be clever enough to count himself lucky for such an out, given his alternatives. He would not get very far if he tried to run without crossing off May first, and that opportunity had sailed.

She stepped into the gap, opened fire. She was prepared for recoil, but in reality felt almost no heat and no vibration coming from the weapon. She peered back into the opening carefully. There was no truck to be seen this time.

Oh well.

The gun fire was getting stronger from the direction of the kitchen, but May wasn't too quick to go in search of it. She walked there, sure, but she did it rather leisurely. And sure enough, the sound of bullets flying by had all but stopped by the time she got close to the area. The guy with the machine had either run out of ammunition, or had been taken on. Probably the latter, judging by the noise of bodies being thrown around. May followed the sounds. In the war room, she found three dead guys with bullets holes in them. Another one seemed relatively unharmed, but he was dozing on the floor and looking out of sorts. He actually was the one with the machine gun, which was now waiting to be picked up. May happily obliged. She paused for a little while, listening, aware that the main fight had moved its position once more. She frowned; there were obviously more then just the four guys she had initially counted.

There were still three of them alive and kicking, she saw upon finally reaching the gym area that was now serving as an arena for the fight. One was holding Ward in a double-handed grip and kindly giving his colleagues the opening they needed. As May watched, Ward avoided getting punched in the solar plexus but got hit in the ribs twice, than forced his right foot into his attacker's knee hard enough to have broken the patella had he had his usual choice of boots on, got lashed at blindly in return and kicked out at the second guy – this time into the crotch area. The man doubled over, Ward dropped down to force the guy immobilizing him let go of his arms, turned around crouching and came back up right behind his back. The sweeping motion kicked the guy's feet from under him, sending him crashing to the mat and completing the sequence.

May frowned once again. The struggle seemed to be going on for way too long. Ward had obviously lost his weapon, but still. Three to one, he should have been able to disable them in under a minute, but not with the basic moves of a level two fighting he had going on right now. He did not even completely go through with this attack, May noted critically. The classic ending move would have been to pull the victim back after having pushing it forward, misbalancing it enough for a quick clean turn of the neck. That would have definitely put an end to the assault; what Ward was doing was only prolonging it. As May watched he actually fell back, stumbling several steps away and doubling over shortly, grimacing in pain.

Sure enough, the third man came right up from the mat and came at him while other two recuperated. Ward met him with an evasion and an approximation of a judo throw that sent him into some training apparel. Another avoiding tactic, but one that finally proved effective enough, as illustrated by Ward pulling a stopper and making all the weights rain down onto the guy's left hand. Undisciplined fool he was, he howled pain instead of looking for the ending blow.

One down, two really enraged ones to go. The one that got the nut kick got up first, was somewhat half-heartedly repelled away, joined forces with the other one and actually almost managed to throw Ward down. By then it was completely obvious that there was something fundamentally wrong with him, but May was having trouble identifying cause. He wasn't shot and nothing looked broken. He was not engaging, though, and moved like he already was exhausted. Once again, he bystepped the guys, landed some punches on his own, got thrown down, but then got hold of Skye's skipping rope and used it in a sort of a lasso manoeuvre that ended with one guy with his legs completely trapped twitching on the floor, and the other one finally all but neutralised in a chocking hold. May was sure he was finally down for the count, but somehow Ward again failed to end the sequence properly – and what the hell was wrong? – and basically let the guy wriggle himself free.

By now May had identified all the factors contributing to the problem. One was that Ward was indeed utterly exhausted. Which, now that she thought about it, she should have guessed earlier on. Two week of almost complete immobility, borderline starvation, questionable sleep arrangements and ongoing pain. No wonder all of Ward's movements looked strained. He executed his moves correctly enough, but the sheer physical strength needed to complete the exercise failed him in the end. Worse was the laboured, panting breathing he had going on. Apparently, broken larynxes tended to become a highly limiting factor as to how much physical exertion one could get away with. His body was starting to shut off, lungs working but not sucking in anything close to a satisfactory amount of oxygen. On top of all that, going barefoot against protection gear of well equipped soldiers did not constitute a sound strategy in any circumstances.

Ward pressed his hand to the wall in the effort to stay upright, but all the same visibly doubled over for a second. The two guys stalked him, limping and bleeding but evidently excited. The backing away and the creepy stalking went on for a little while. All three were so concentrated on their game that they had yet to notice May. The guy with the bruised nuts was once again the first to lunge. The impact sent both him and Ward crashing back into the kitchen. This time they did not manage to get up. Ward rolled with his first attacker, doing his best to use his body as a shield against the second one. For a couple of moments, all there was to see was a whirlwind of hitting limbs, and then the three disappeared from May's view behind the isle. She straightened out from her hiding place, suddenly aware of her own inaction in a fight that surely had gone on hard and long enough, looking for an opening wide enough to cross off the attackers without peppering Ward with bullets in the process. But for the third time in one day, he proved to be quicker then her. Three shots in quick succession went off behind the counter. There was a check up pause, and then another shot. All movement had ceased after that, not counting Ward slowly getting up from the floor, leaning on the counter for support. May looked for signs that he had played up his weakness to convincingly fall back and gain himself a weapon, but he was definitely pretty worked up. The struggle for air could not be faked; every breath came with a little wheezing bruised sound.

It did not take him long to notice May. Immediately he let go of the isle, falling back against the back wall instead. Next thing she knew, his gun was up and ready, pointed dead centre at her forehead. This time there was no room for interpretation, no pointing off centre, no parade rest. Just coiled up, will-go-down-fighting determination mixed up with no small amount of dread. Double handed grip again, for once completely justified as his entire body shook with overwrought exhaustion, the strength needed just to keep arms up abandoning him at alarming rate. Ready to fire, and still no doing it just yet. Just pressing his back against the wall as if he could recoil yet further from May, sucking in breath after breath. Waiting.

May did the same thing that had already worked once and took a step toward him. Still, she was aware she was walking into a completely different standoff this time. There was no common enemy to distract them any longer, and with the way Ward was positively panting for breath... May did not need to be a shrink to take a guess at where his current thought process was going.

She took another self assured step. Ward all but flinched, but the weapon he held became a little steadier for it.

"Don't move" he said. The effort alone got high points from her, as he almost succeeded in making it sound like an order.

"Stand down".

That was a real order. May sure hoped it would come through as well as the last time. Ward sure did have a thing for them. Another step in his direction, to physically emphasize the illusory right to command. It was a pity that she was no Garrett apparently, as all she got was another wince and a sound eery similar to growl.

"Don't move", he gritted, a little angrier but still mostly distressed. May was starting to suspect that, for reasons unknown, Ward truly lacked the capacity to shoot her.

"Stand down", she repeated.

And then what? The little voice was an unwelcome nuisance, more so as she could read the same question written in his eyes. He wasn't going back down to his cell, if not for deep ethical reasons, than simply because he had just proved how easily he could pick his way out of it. He also wasn't going to walk free. For all the advantage he held, as long as he could not bring himself to cross off May, he was completely stuck in a one sided stalemate. She could see the exact moment Ward came to the same conclusion, and the moment when he came to terms with it, elbows unlocking so that his weapon came to be held closer to his body. The transformation was subtle, but obvious for everyne who cared enough to see. Distress washed away, giving place to sombre calculation. His eyes turned much colder, but not fight-cold. He was, May was completely sure of it, wondering if he should force her hand – and she would definitely shoot to kill if startled badly enough, for all that she could guess at the ultimate intent behind the provocation – or he could well end it himself. That seemed to be the main plan, judging from the way he slightly tilted his head back, baring his chin for better access.

Stop it, you idiot.  
You have just earned yourself some points, keep up instead of doing down.  
Ward, damn it, calm down, I swear it is over. I am so very sorry.

She was no shrink, and she said nothing of the sorts, just lowered her weapon and left it on the counter, even though he was still formally pointing more at her than at himself. If she was to be shot today, then so be it. She was so done with this. There would not be any spilled tears, if..., but she was not so completely stone hearted as to look on passively and simply deny her role in all of this. There were enough demons in her bed at night to not want the knowledge that she had driven a man to suicide added to that. May made herself turn around, her entire body tingling with the ungodly sensation of an armed, active enemy at her six. She walked to the sink, filled a glass with water and swallowed hard and long. Filled another one and made it slide in Ward's direction. Cracked her neck, pushed the hair out of her eyes, walked to the table, made eye contact.

"Marines or Army, what do you think?" she asked sitting down.

She knew the answer, she had met these guys, and yet she wanted this one question answered more then she had wanted any of ones she had thrown at Ward in the last miserable month.

"Army", he said after a while, the kind of automatic response one would give if asked if two plus two equalled four or five.

"Incompetent assholes", she went on but it was all completely wrong, there was no bonding to be found in that direction as Ward was arguably feeling closer to said SHIELD-hating assholes than he would ever feel to May. True enough, he answered nothing, only eyed the water for a second like he had never seen the likes of it, and then kept on eyeing May. His silent scrutiny made her feel as exhausted as he looked.

"Good job. Now quit pointing at me and come sit down before you faint", she said at last, no real steel left in her voice. Now that she had said it, it was as if her voicing it aloud had made it true. A slow full body shudder made its way through Ward. His arms fell down on their own accord, the muscles no longer strong enough to keep up with his will. His eyes closed for a second, the entire body going lax. The gun hung down uselessly from his hand. May fought the urge to lunge for it, and sure enough: eventually he opened his eyes and offered it wordlessly, grip first. She took it just as wordlessly and got up to help him to the chair.


	6. Chapter 6

Ward sat down heavily, leaning on the table for support, doing little else than staring blankly at the patterned plastic in front of him. May silently passed him the glass of water. He drank up greedily, eyes closed, desperate to get back enough liquid after the expended effort. The back of his shirt clung to him, his breath slowing down but shoulders still heaving. May herself was not quite there yet. She filled another glass for herself, took Ward's away from him to also refill it. Opening the bottom drawer, she found the bottle of mild sleeping pills Simmons had recommended Phil against his sleepwalking, stress induced insomnia (they had all noticed by now). She crushed two pills between her fingers, thought a little and then added other two. She made no effort to remain stealthy. There were traces of powder on the glass and little fragments floating at the bottom, but May sincerely doubted Ward would notice. And if he did, she would just instruct him to drink it anyway. Chances were on her side he'd comply. It was not a perfect solution, but she was not going to risk a repeat performance from earlier. The entire situation was a minefield of unknown dimensions.

She gave Ward his soundly drugged water, wondering if she had gone a little overboard with it. He looked like he would drop down on his own if just given enough time, but May knew that as long as there was a perceived danger around he would continuously fight the exhaustion. And she very much doubted that she could convince him that she was not a danger to him right now. All in all, she simply did not know what to do with him. There was no safe place to lock him up that would keep him neutralized. She supposed she could march him all the way down to the Bus and lock him in the holding cell, but that option felt like a setback now that he seemed to have taken the cooperative stand.

May was no shrink, but she was an expert in tai-chi, and she was good at keeping stress and stress related escalations of violence at bay. It was easy to know what to do next. She rummaged through the kitchen, coming up with the remains of some pasta with meat sauce that could be easily heated in the microwave. If Koenig had been documenting all his intake right, Ward was eating maybe half a sandwich a day, enough to know that he was not purposely starving himself to death but not enough to keep in a fighting kind of shape. He only ever ate anything in the mornings, hours before she came, so May guessed it was a toss between a tactical decision and a stress induced reaction. She figured he had to be really hungry now, but as she put the food in front of him and went searching for a short enough fork to trust him with Ward made no move to indicate he wanted to start eating. He was sitting quietly enough, hands on his lap, head bowed. He looked at the plate intently for a while, but then bowed his head again and loosely hugged himself instead of reaching for the fork.

What the hell was wrong with him? It was a plate of pasta, not a sell your soul kind of deal. That one had been closed and sealed by Ward a long time ago. He looked like he took it for a devil's test – one he had lost without even trying.

"Sao Paolo, Rua Allegre 721. Madrid, Castellana 233. Brussels, Saint Gilles Square…"  
His voice had an unsteady, deeply shameful ring to it. "Singapore, Chancery Lane 1A. Melbourne, Surrey Hills, 12-C". He paused, took a breath, went on. The fingers of his left hand were closing slowly, leaving a red scratch on his right arm. "Cape Town, Brackenfell Boulevard, 7560. Bangkok..."

Some of them May could locate approximately, and they were centric city places, busy buildings on big avenues with all the anonymity of people coming and going at any time of day or night. Nothing as large as a proper base could be hidden there, it had to be personal safe houses, she could tell. As far as intel quality went, it was nothing to lose sleep about, and still Ward was behaving like it physically pained him to say the words, like it was the best kept secret in the universe and he the biggest traitor of the world.

"Hydra's hiding places?" She pressed.

"Garrett's and mine."

He gave some more addresses and then was silent for a while, going as far as looking up from the table to May when she offered no immediate reaction. The pasta was slowly getting cold in front of him, homey and delicious and obvious deeply uncomfortable. Ward seemed to have no clue about what to do with it, no training to fall back to when faced with offhand kindness. May could not help to wonder if things could have been different if she and Phil had indeed went through with their routine of good cop and bad cop. She had thought he had already finished - it certainly was a long and comprehensive emergency setup to have organized around the world - but Ward closed his eyes, literally dug his nails into the flesh of his arms and went on doggedly.

"There is a piece of hunting land near High Peaks, Massachusetts. Pretty big, some thirty miles off the 87 interstate. It's a forest basically, nothing much there, just a cabin. There will be no directions there but you can probably find it easy enough through a satellite, knowing where to look. There is the spare hard reset mechanism for John's Deathlok device, the one that I kept. He sometimes worked from there, so there could be some data, though it's probably not much. Some fancy weaponry, a 190-V prototype I nicked when they were still in development."

"What exactly is that place?"

His lips formed a short word he jealously kept silent before shrugging sullenly.

"The main safe house. The rest are emergency lie low holes, most never even used. "

"It's not enough". It was not really a threat, it was just that Ward was their only lead on Hydra, and it simply wasn't.

"I was a sleeper, May", he said almost gently, like she was the one who was being too slow.

When the implication downed, it was with a feeling of cold vacuum below the sternum May had not felt since the night Mike Petersen had betrayed Coulson in exchange for his son. That time, it had been a whole collection of tiny details adding up to a disquieting feeling of walking right into a trap of their own creation, feeling clever and prepared for all eventualities right up until the working premise proved to be completely wrong. This time, she had not seen in coming.

"Need to know only, and that only after activation. Which only happened what, four days before the fall? I never had the time to get around all that much."

Garrett could basically move around as much as he wanted as a Level 8 agent. He was stationed at HQ, a part of high direction with proper authority and autonomy to match it. A highly active Level 6 such as Ward would spend about 80% of his life being monitored one way or another. Of course he did not assist to weekly Hydra meetings, did not travel from Hydra base to Hydra base.

Stupid. So very stupid, May. Ward was the final ace in the sleeve of his senior handler. Keeping him a literal dead end made perfect strategic sense. Such an obvious decision, why did nobody, not even Coulson, think of that? The answer was easy to understand. The takeover had made Hydra seem all powerful, all knowing, ever present. To think about Ward spending months among them on the plane still made May sick at night. Garrett and Ward had had the upper hand for so long, it had been unthinkable that Ward just did not have the keys to the entire Hydra kingdom in his head...

Goddamn it.

"Why did you not tell me this sooner? You kept clinging to a fairly useless info, you had to realize you made it look relevant to us."

"It was not useless to me."

And what the hell should that even mean? And she should stop this train of thought right there, least she begun to blame Ward for his own ongoing torture over inexistent information. That one was all on her. She had walked a very thin line and she had screwed up. At the least, she was perfectly willing to admit to it. Which brought her to…

"Why did you help me?"

"And why not?"

"I am your enemy."

"You were a risk variable, and therefore a potential target, but the mission is now over anyway."

The phrase was obviously way too long for him right now. He was acting a lot drowsier already, adrenaline crash and drugs and warmth conspiring against will and training. It was ever so cold there in the basement, remembered May. The temperature in the living quarters was at least five grades higher, and it showed. He had to realise that he was stumbling over the articulation, as he blinked slowly and self consciously, lifted up his hands and examined them for tremor (there was none), made them into fists and relaxed them slowly.

"What have you given me?"

"A sedative. It would work slower if you'd just eaten anything. Eat now".

The whole set up was way too close to Pavlov's dog conditioning for May's liking, but it worked beautifully and a quick result was exactly what was needed anyway. He did devour everything in less than two minutes as soon as there was an explicit go-ahead.

"Go shower. Make it quick. Leave the door open".

He nodded and was off unsteadily.

May had abandoned the shower in a hurry only this morning, so she knew there wasn't much that could be used as a weapon in there. She supposed Ward could think of something if he truly put his mind to it, but she would bet a lot on the fact that he just wouldn't. It was freakish, how quickly she was getting used to the calm amenability with which he followed her instructions, and how comfortable she was leaving him to his own devices to go into the war room, disable the attack alarms and issue the all clear code. If Koenig was hiding in the panic room somewhere, he would now know to come out. Phil would be also put at ease. Hopefully he had known to not hijack a means of transportation to get here in a hurry.

Coming back, she checked to see that he had indeed left the bathroom door wide open. Listening to the running water she went back to the lab. They had wanted to check for possible communicators or tracking devices hidden among his personal belonging, but all had seemed clean in there. His bag of clothes was the only personal possession of Ward on board; the contents testified to a truly Spartan list of priorities. Two black and two white T-shirts. Two long sleeved shirts, black. Two greyish hoodies and two pairs of training pants. A small tightly bundled collection of plain white underwear. The rest his wardrobe was typically SHIELD- issued depending on the operation, from suits to Ward's standard mission wear.

"You break it, you take it", had read the window sign of the little china shop on the corner of the street where she grew up. In the past, it had seemed terribly unfair to the young Melinda. Now, though... They said it was something impossible to fake, said the interrogator would always know when the right moment came, and they were obviously right.

By the time she had some clean clothes in her hands the water had stopped running. She was prepared to be generous with time, but Ward had needed less than five minutes all in all. He was now using her disposable lady razor, and they both froze a little when he caught her in the mirror.

"I meant to ask. You weren't there".

"Put these on."

She threw the bundle at him. By now his reactions were so off, he let half of it fall to the ground. May did not comment on it.

"Coulson will want to talk to you when he gets back. You will tell him everything, starting with the day Garrett recruited you to the day he died. No more funny crap from you; you will answer him fully and truthfully. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You will not get leniency for helping me today. I am not saying this to goad you, it's just a fair warning."

Coulson would overlook the way the fight had gone and proceed to have a fit over May allowing Ward to roam the main floor almost free. She could just see it. The young ones were his absolute priority, and Ward was a weapon more dangerous than a ticking bomb.

"I realise", he said. "You need not worry."

"Come." She took him to the furthest bunk room at the end of the long corridor. "You have a couple of hours. Sleep it off now."

He obeyed even that command, moving to sit deeper on the bunk, letting her cuff him to the bed frame, carefully manoeuvring to avoid twisting the handcuff while lying on his side. May wondered if there was at least some fight in him left, a limit after which he would push back. An idle question, anyway; she did not think she'd have the heart to test it.

Coulson and company come back three hours later, a whirlwind of too late and unnecessary stress and excessive weapon weaving. May had already disposed of the dead bodies. She had been pleased to see that Koenig had survived the assault, and quickly sent him to check the damaged entrance door. The three soldiers from the basements shot with icers were now in Ward's old cell with some extra toxin on their foreheads. After inspecting the lock May was no closer to knowing how had Ward managed to escape, but she was certain the actual prisoners would not exhibit the same prowess. They would become a problem shortly, that with knowing the location of the Playground. May felt a wave of anger every time she remembered that she had led them there.

There was a quick situation report in Coulson's office. Just as predicted, it ended rather brusquely when Coulson got wind of the actual degree of freedom she had allowed their guest.

"Really, May? You hurt him, and now you are starting to feel sorry for him. This is textbook emotional transfer, and I am sure he is betting on it."

"What the hell for? He could have hightailed out of here."

May guessed she could understand, but it smarted all the same. It was an insult to her judgement and her abilities.

"Maybe he could not. He probably figured by now he cannot take you on. More importantly, this man is Hydra. He has been living with us, eating with us, patiently playing pretend for months, and what for? A very minuscule chance he could overhear something. He is devious, and he has proven to be very patient. And now some strange guys turn up, he seemingly gets you out of a crossfire, and suddenly he has a comfy bed not ten meters away from the rest of the team sleeping quarters? Allow me to doubt your good judgement, May".

"You think I feel like I owe something to him?" Oh, she loved Phil with all her soul, but the man could be blind fool at times. "He waited for permission to eat something that was already in front of him. That is how dogs are trained to behave."

"I don't like it".

"You gave me free reign of Ward's interrogation, he has finally collaborated. You don't like it? Then take over. I will step back gladly. In fact, I insist on it".

Low blow, but a well deserved one. If Phil wanted to use her as his metaphorical left hand in this, he should acknowledge her properly at least in private. "And for the record, he is heavily sedated, but should aware enough again in an hour or two."

Ward woke up earlier than that, sitting up with his back pressed to the wall when May checked on him.

"Time to go", she announced moving to cuff him properly this time. It was about forty meters from the cot to the Directors Office, and it wasn't like Ward would suddenly decide that it was the time to flee, but still. They were not alone in the Playground anymore.

Something in Ward's behaviour prompted her to pause and tell him to speak up, to which he requested permission for another bathroom break. She ended marching him into the bathroom, re-cuffing him so that his hands were held in front of him, and later cuff them again behind. It was the worst kind of hassle: the completely unneeded one. Still, it was protocol, and Coulson was not completely without a point.

Skye and Simmons had been politely requested to make themselves scarce. They knew there had been a tentative hostile takeover, and did not offer one word of protest. Phil was in his office, pretending to do some work, but May knew that he was eagerly waiting. May knocked twice, waited for him to allow entry. Just a week ago she would have entered first and knocked later, but he was SHIELD Director now, and other norms were starting to apply. She kind of hated it.

"Come in."

Ward was not resisting any, but she still took him by his arm and bodily propelled him in there. The more she thought about it, the more she was grudgingly forced to admit that Coulson was actually right. She was more upset by all this than she cared to admit. She could not calibrate her behaviour toward Ward properly. She had been kind to him earlier. It had felt right at that time, and it had worked out - she had retrieved some information. But now, looking back, she had trouble understanding where that kindness had come from. Ward was a traitor and a murderer, he had no right to sleep anywhere in the proximity of Simmons' bed. May guessed she indeed had some degree of enforcer's guilt, which actually meant Phil was right and she should take a giant step back.

Still, on the threshold, she made Ward stop and spun him around toward her.

"You answer him, and you answer truthfully. You will not get leniency for it, but you may get some self worth back. Do you understand me?"

She was happy to see him nod urgently. She was not without heart, and she wanted him to do well. Cooperate fully, acknowledge everything. There was a small measure of peace to be gained by doing it, and Ward could do with that instead of the promised internal torture. Coulson was standing at the head of his desk, looking idly at the selection of collectibles he had transferred to this place. During the entire time the Bus had been in enemy hands, his office and his collection there have remained untouched. Garrett was not the one to want a proper office, May supposed. More of a hands-on guy. She slid inside silently behind Ward, making herself scarce by keeping to the side. She did not know if Coulson truly counted her as compromised, but he would send her off if her truly did not want her in there.

"Sit." Coulson indicated the chair in front of his desk. Ward did, warily but without delay. "Have anything to say for yourself before we begin?"

"No, sir."

There was an audio feed on the desk, recording quietly. May guessed that there may also be a complementary video recording somewhere, but she was not sure if Coulson activated it. It was not to be a trial; they were weeks too late for that.

"Who recruited you into Hydra?"

"John Garrett."

"When?"  
"October 1999."

If Phil stumbled at that date, he never showed it on his face. It was a powerful achievement; Fifteen years of treachery, who could have imagined that? They figured that Hydra roots had to go deep, to affect roughly the half of all senior agents, but not that far into the past.

"You were accepted into SHIELD's Operational division in 2004. You sought enrolment as an infiltration tactic?"

"Yes, sir".

See? May just knew Ward would possess useful information outside of his little safe houses list. He might not even think of as an intel, but for them? Knowing Hydra did not approach qualified agents to make them turn, but filled the Academy with all sorts of bad seeds was beyond significant. It showed just how far, how wide, how carefully thought out and prepared Hydra had been …

"Who were you reporting to during your years as a sleeper agent?"

"John Garrett."

"Who else?"

"Only him."

"And if you could not make contact with him?"

"I waited."

"If you had important information you felt the urge to share without delay…"

"I quelled that urge, remembering that being my CO and a higher positioned officer he would probably have the same information."

"How did you make contact?"

"He took me out for drinks, if there was a long stretch without missions we could run together."

This one seemed to be a dead end to May, and Coulson was quickly coming to the same conclusion. No sense in establishing two different lines of communications for two double agents, if the same work could be done with one. He shifted in his place, checked something on his computer and set a completely different pace.

"I want details, year by year."

Ward sat a little straighter at that, visibly collecting memories. May was pleased to see that her warnings had been heeded; he was certainly doing his best to behave.

"2004, I was at the Academy trying to get in. 2005, had the mandatory deep undercover assignment. From then on to 2007 we run joined operations as an established pair, Garrett and I. We were on the lookout in case anything important happened, but it just didn't. Well, we got wind about all these expeditions to the Arctic, but it was not Operations driven, so in the end Garrett just passed the word on. 2009, I made level 5. Run some joint missions, clashed with a couple of other agents. John said it was a good opportunity. By 2010, I only run solo missions. Almost got sent to oversee Stark that year; it was a toss between me and Romanoff and someone in the brass figured Potts would take better to a male PA. John moved some strings to pull me out of that one. Said that Hydra would of course be very interested in Iron Man, but it would screw with our own agenda, would give me way too much spotlight. 2011, there was a lot of movement around the clean up missions after the visit from Thor, and I had to pass on all of that because instead of coming to join John on his team I crash-landed from seven stores high. There was that new age sect in Seoul making noises, their leader saw the footage of a guy flying in New Mexico and took it for a sign, figured they´d all be able to fly if they just jumped from a skyscraper. I broke six ribs and both clavicles, got a commotion, screwed John's plans whatever they were. He was so pissed, he did not speak to me for five month. 2012, we heard rumours of a Tesseract- based prototype being given out for field testing. I was all set to get to try one, but then the aliens came and the Chitauri technology became hot topic everywhere."

"I am not interested in your petty thefts, Ward. I want to know the leaks, and the fallen through missions."

"I never made a mission fall through, if it could be avoided. Mostly, John made sure to keep me away from any compromising stuff. Belgium 2012, I had to infiltrate an office that should not be infiltrated. He pulled all strings, got me another mission in Baghdad. Another time he did not pull me out, just warned in advance that I would not be able to do it. There were 30 guys waiting for me in there, I got shot even before I could properly aim my weapon. HQ then aborted the whole thing."

"So Garrett went to great lengths to make sure you kept your sparkly clean cover. Why?"

"I was to watch his back. If he was ever compromised, I was to get him out."

"And after you got yourself assigned to this team? You were to keep an eye on me".

"Yes, sir."

May sighed. Phil had thought he was assembling an elite independent team, and in reality there was no person on the Bus that wasn't stationed there to spy on him instead.  
"So what did Centipede actually want with me? Make super soldiers primed for immortality?"

"Completely regenerate injuries instead of fusing metal prostheses with what was left of the flesh. The Deathlok project was started in the nineties by SHIELD, but only got shitty results. The injured agents had to undergo weekly maintenance, most were not good enough to go back into the field. So it was sold into private hands, converted into Centipede. Results were still not good enough, and the old prostheses were all failing. So when word got around that you have been all but resurrected... John was sure you of all people would know how. I was supposed to figure it out, but I went about it the long way. I guess he finally got tired of waiting, and it just all blew up from there..."

"Like my kidnapping? Skye's near death experience?"

"I did not realise how little time I had. I would have tried harder, had he told me. There were tons of leads I could have followed. I figured May had the encrypted line. Agent Hand knew, too, there was certain info in the Hub I could have used to infer the location of the TAHITI bunker. Thing was, I could not do any of these things without getting my SHIELD cover fully blown. I did not want to do that, so I waited. It was my fault. I figured if the situation was dire enough, I would get my orders, but John just went for something completely different instead."

May could see Coulson seethe quietly, the intricate detail of Ward's misdeeds setting him on edge. Ward himself either did not notice it, or paid it no heed. May did advise him to speak truthfully, and apparently he did. It was the truth seen from the point of view of an enemy, peppered with sincere regret at having failed his Hydra CO.

"So, just to sum it up, you were never SHIELD", said Coulson very steadily. "You got involved with Hydra when you were what, fifteen?"

"Almost sixteen."

"How did you ever do that? Answered to an ad looking for some nazis wannabes?"  
"Garrett sprung me from the juvie. Said he'd give me one more chance at doing something right."

"You were there for arson. He was the one to bail you out? You got sent to a military academy after."

Ward hesitated a little, when he had not hesitated in anything he had previously said.  
"I was there because I tried to kill somebody. I had already been at that academy for a year. I never went back, just stayed with him."

That was definitely not on Ward's file. Not even close. Hydra must have had a hell of record altering experts to erase something like this. Still, Coulson perked up visibly, finally having identified a thread he could pull on.

"Where were you trained? By whom? How many of you were there?"

"No, it wasn't a... I just went with John. We just went together."

"Garrett was a full time field agent. He had no time for training anybody on the side, and you have 5 years missing from you story."

"I needed that time. I had never been an outdoorsy kid, I could not climb, I wasn't very good even at the basic physical. We practiced survival skills, when I got better he showed how to handle the short weapons. And when I got that right, he got me a long range hunting rifle. He did not need to spend much time with me. I trained myself until he came back. And then there were the languages. I spent hours every day just listening to the cassettes."

It sounded too innocent to ever have been true. Too… reactive, like it was something that simply happened to him without any active input from his will, instead of it being something he had wanted. An unknown man would not simply take a teen along into the woods and expect him to stay there alone for years under the guise of survival training. Any kid would know to scream abuse and run. A hunting area was not a creepy windowless basement and Ward wasn't a little helpless girl who foolishly accepted a ride from a stranger. If he had been chosen, he must have done something to attract Garrett's attention. If he had stayed, he must have wanted to. Must have played along willingly. Must have allowed himself to be trained.

"Do you know what I miss in all this? What makes no whatsoever sense at all? You have told me a good story, but you have failed to give me a good motive". So Coulson was coming to the same conclusion as May. "Was there a reason for all this, Ward? Was it money? Was it conviction? Or was it simply fun? A little bodybuilding in the woods, firing guns at beer bottles, showing off for the girls at the local pub?"

There was an almost blank look on Ward's face; it was certainly difficult to know what he was feeling. Still, the pretence was not complete. There was gauntness in his eyes that rivalled the looks he gave May from inside his cell in the last days of his stay there.

"Why did you do it in the first place? Why did you keep doing? Tell me, why?"

There was a visible shudder, like Ward was fighting the desire to curl up. He did not answer, would not answer. May has come to read the little cues of him easily enough to know that this line of interrogation would end in nothing. If not in something worse. Less then twelve hours ago there was no living soul that could pull a word out of Ward, if Phil was not careful he would land them back there.

"And just so you know, I do not believe for a second that you were all alone in that Hydra boot camp. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are just not special enough for Garrett to have been the only one."

"It wasn't…"

"Did you compete at who was the best at beating up some random homeless blokes?

"It wasn't like…"

"…that, I am sure of it. Believe me, I know how these thing work. The first thing is to desensitise you to the violence. I want the names of your fellow little friends, and I will get them."

"It wasn't what John taught me to do."

"Did he never suggest you hone your shooting skills by killing small furry animals at close distance?"

Ward was definitely shuddering now, tiny quick tremors of his shoulders born from the supreme effort at staying completely still. Somewhere between finishing his side of the story and Phil starting to get genuinely angry at him, he had lost the eye contact he had determinedly held with Phil and was now staring at his lap, jaw set with force. This was useless, she thought not for the first time. Phil wasn't even asking anymore, just venting. This was not the Director of SHIELD, it was a man betrayed several times in a span of a week. The fact that he was not venting at Garrett, whom he had known half of his life and who had been by large the brains of the betrayal, but at Ward, was a good measure of just how much he had been truly hurt by him.

"Tell me something, Ward. But first do me the courtesy of looking at me." He tensed up even more at that, so much that even Coulson could not remain oblivious. He stood up, went around the table and sat on the edge in front of Ward. "None of these evading techniques from you, you slimy coward". When Ward did look up, stopping somewhere at the level of Coulson's lips, Phil inclined his head to one side and observed him with a curious, analyzing expression. His tone went from strangled with tightly controlled fury to contemplating and scornful. "After all that living in the woods Nazi routine, after all the dirt and the brainwashing, when you came to SHIELD… Went to orientation at the Academy, went to class, met all there dedicated people. Got the Wall of Honour tour. What did you think, if anything at all?"

Closed up silence. Coiled... something, some emotion desperately struggling to come free and at the same time being pushed down even more desperately. May could not read if it was anger, despair or fear, and she doubted Ward could have told her himself.

"I said look at me! After years of lying, of never confiding into a living soul, of always being dirty inside, you had the opportunity to interact with honest, noble people dedicated to a greater cause. I want to know if it ever, just one time in ten years, made you pause and question Hydra's goals. Or was following Garrett everything you ever dreamed of, Agent Ward? You lived ten years among decent people who were prepared to give their lives for SHIELD, who gave their damn best to protect the world..."

Definitely anger, now. The cornered up type, the most dangerous of all. May instinctively too a step forward to check the handcuffs; it was a good thing Coulson never got them off.

"I thought it was full of itself." Ward's words were low, but clear.

"Excuse me?"

For all Coulson had claimed to want an answer, the actual one seemingly startled him enough to make him lose him train of thought. Ward drew a little into himself, as if expecting a physical outburst, but went on steadily – and angrily – enough.

"I thought it told a pretty tale, and it knew how to sell itself really well. It dedicated more resources to cover up the consequences of its operations than it did to the ops themselves. It did not always med-evacuate its soldiers…"

"You dirty little Hydra ass-kisser bitch, how dare you..." Coulson had stood up, making Ward look up just to keep eye level with him. Which he had successfully done, testimony of the snapping that was having place right there. Detachedly, May thought that it was somewhat strange that Ward's tolerance of Coulson's rhetoric had proved much thinner than his tolerance of her physical mistreatment.

"…while allocating resources to all kinds of weirdoes as long as they claimed to have seen or dreamed anything unusual. It confiscated objects from all over the world and hoarded them in their own private vault, which is exactly what Hydra was also doing. It proudly stood watch against an enemy that had already had found its way inside, so actually Hydra wins there. But you think I care about them, or SHIELD? There are all the same, John said the main goal of any organization big enough would always end up being sustaining itself. And he was right. I was not doing it for Hydra, I was doing it for him, and you have no idea who he was, and what he did, and what he wanted. And I am not an idiot, I know exactly what I've done."

May moved to make him stand down, but a tumultuous look from Phil made it clear for her that this matter, he would handle himself. She belonged to the selected number of people who had had the dubious privilege of having seen Coulson truly angry. The worst of what she had witnessed had actually been directed at her - and fairly, as she had badly harmed his trust by reporting on him under the guise of being a friend. But Ward was attacking the entire agency, and the world did not know fury like that of a Director scorned.

"You have no idea of what you've done." he said very quietly, and the danger emanating from him would have been enough to make the most fearless agent back off.

"I screwed everything up, for everybody, on both sides. Is that what you wanted me to say? I was weak, I let myself get involved, I thought I would get to have my cake and eat it, and I ruined everything. I stalled my recon on your death, I failed to realize that John's implants were catastrophically failing, and I made him look elsewhere for a way out. We could have been cleanly out of your sight months ago, and instead I played freaking Scrabble on the Bus and made everyone on board into a target. You were kidnapped and Skye ended up shot, and Fitzsimmons almost died, all because I spent fifteen years failing to learn a single simple lesson. "

"You threw them to their death! Two not cleared for field agents!"

"I know that! You think I don't know that? I was there! Why the hell am I even still alive?"

"SHIELD does not execute its prisoners".

"Then just give me a pistol with one bullet and look the other way. Give me a suicide mission. Tell me what you want and I will do it. I will do anything to make it right."

"You killed people. You mangled Fitz. You cannot ever make it right! Did you think of that, pulling that lever? Or did you think that having orders was enough? There is no right for you, there is no coming back from that."

"Then give me the damn gun!"

"Death would be too good for you. You will rot in prison for the rest of your miserable life. And every time you get funny ideas about taking a shortcut, think about Fitz and about how much a coward you were, and still are..."

"ENOUGH!" May walked in between them both, using her body to push Coulson away from Ward. "I've had enough, from both of you."

"Agent May, stand down!" Coulson said, tone just as seething as when directed at Ward. "You are disrupting the interrogation."

"The screaming match, I think. Stand back and listen to yourself. You are supposed to be the SHIELD's Director."

"Agent May, remove yourself from this office immediately."

Steel in his voice, so eerily similar to Fury's when he was acting all determined and leader-like. May adored him so much, it would someday probably lead to her ruin. A time would come when Coulson would not consent to be saved from himself. She turned her back to him, paying no heed. Whatever consequences this may bring, she would deal with them later.

"You want a way out, Ward? Fair enough", she bodily made him stand up and turn around, gripping his wrists tightly and elevating them. A turn of key and he was uncuffed, and May was swinging him around facing her again and offering her weapon to him, grip first. "Here is a gun, full magazine, good working condition. Go retake the Fridge for us, seeing as how you ruined it."

"Agent May, this is your last warning, there will not be a third."

Good thing about Phil was, he was a professional first and would never dream of physically forcing May as long as she held the weapon. Ward, for his part, did not move at all, just eyed them both and the gun wearily.

"Not another word from you, Phillip. Ward, what are you waiting for? You have just got yourself an order. Of course, you can also turn tail and run. Be our guest; nobody will care enough to pursue you."

"Right now?" God, did he sound lost.

"You want an official briefing?"

He made a kind of aborted movement that signalled that he indeed wanted to take the gun very much, but in the end stayed motionless. All his attention was suddenly on May, ignoring Coulson as if he wasn't even there.

"You will get in trouble", he reminded her in a low voice, ready and eager but checking himself in order to clarify a not quite precise order.

"What did I say about coddling me?"

"Never to."

"Then off you go".

His fingers closed around the gun. A short nod, and he was walking through the door toward the entrance to the station.

"Agent Melinda May, you are relieved of your active status..."

She ruthlessly tuned Phil out. He'd talk himself into putting her into Ward's handcuffs if she let him. She walked into the bathroom instead, knowing Coulson would follow, and wordlessly pointed at the mirror in there.

"Take a good look. You have been screaming abuse at a prisoner, and why? Because he told you some uncomfortable truths about SHIELD?"

"That's not..."

"Should I remind you what has been going on in the basement for days on end?"

"Damn, May! You still cannot let him free!"

"What are you afraid of? That he will run, or that he will not? Or maybe that he will die trying? We are building a new SHIELD and the hard truth is, the old one was destroyed because it was not good at all. You have a responsibility to do this right, and he is not..." She closed her eyes, thought about everything that Ward had done for Garrett with no hesitation, and the simple fact that had she ordered him to attack Phil he would have doubtlessly done so, and amended herself. "This is not worth our souls."

AN: This chapter marks a huge change in the story, as I am sure everyone can tell. What maybe not everyone can tell is that it was a complete b*tch to write. I have tried to get a sort of balance between Ward's objective responsibility for his deeds in Coulson's POV and his subjective feeling of responsibility for both harming the team and failing his primary directive to serve Garrett in his own POV. If you have made it this far, I would greatly appreciate you input (small as it may be) on this particular chapter. I am totally welcoming constructive criticism , in fact I am very open to discuss this point and will accept suggestions if they prove fair. Thank you in advance.


	7. Chapter 7

They spoke no more about it that day, thankfully. Even if Phil had wanted to do something different about Ward (and again, what would that be?), the man was gone by the time he could have gotten to it. The screaming match died before she needed to make use such banal pearls of wisdom as "this is not the foundation you want to build SHIELD upon" and her favourite, automatically all-conquering: "What Skye would think if she knew?"

Skye herself was gaping openly by the time May left the office and made her way to the living quarters, leaving Coulson alone to think. The decision to just let Ward walk was not without all kinds of setbacks. Even if getting him out of their hair was quickly becoming the easy option for the peace of mind of everyone involved, there was the little detail of a Hydra operative who had just walked out of SHIELD headquarters. Their secret playground was not so secret anymore.

"Did Ward just…" Skye made an abstract gesture intended to portray the path Ward had taken. It was difficult to know what she was thinking, apart from being rightly flabbergasted at the development. "Did Ward just walk out of here with a gun in his hand?"

She was hovering in the aisle across the office area, not quite as out of earshot as ordered, but close enough to not risk being called out on it. Pretending to just pass through, clearly, but her diversion skills were truly pathetic. Even Simmons would have done a better job. It was a good thing that Coulson's office did not have video cameras, or Skye would be hijacking them judging by her poorly contained curiosity.

"Did he?" May asked. He had acted so matter-of-factly upon hearing the assignment, she could almost picture him stopping at the control centre and indeed waiting for the full list of mission parameters to appear on screen. Or, at the very least, she could certainly picture him stopping by the weapons racks and helping himself to something better than a pistol. The one May had given him was more a declaration of intent than a weapon which could be used for hostile takeover of a heavily defended compound.  
"Yep."

"I sent him on a mission."

She did not care what the girl would think about her, but that didn't mean May did not want to know. Curiously, Skye's eyes lit in a mischievous grin.

"Wait, does SHIELD actually have a brainwashing machine?" May didn't honour that with an answer. "Coulson wouldn't just let him walk."

"He was of no use to us here."

"You can't trust him!" The girl was about to burst with indignation.

"It depends entirely on what you plan to trust him with."

"Us. SHIELD."

"Those are two completely different things," May pointed out and was on her way, having little intention to discuss this with the child. She had little doubt that Skye would go to Coulson after that; Phil was welcome to lose as much of his time as he wanted on schooling her. He'd probably talk about second chances again. It wouldn't be the first time he waxed poetic about a decision that was initially made entirely against his will. The incident with Ward and Fitz's little foray into extraction-less missions came to mind, along with Phil's monologue about trusting the system. It was just as well that he had become the only pillar of said system overnight. Now he had no choice but to play by the rules and colour by the numbers. The question of how long and how well he could live with himself while doing so remained.

Simmons wasn't on the premises, having gone to visit Fitz. Hypoxia was a done deal, so the real question was how well had his brain answered to it. After spending about a week at a hospital he had been proclaimed stable and fit enough to leave the acute care. The tests came up free of any big, pressing problems. His broken arm was set, his extremities all moved perfectly, his eyes saw and his language skills were roughly the same as before. The images of his brain that Simmons had shown at Coulson's request during the briefing had no gaping holes in them. Still, nobody was eager to let him just walk away from the hospital, and rehabilitation was to be his next step. That was where the problems started. The tests became more complicated. Suddenly, it wasn't about holding his arms up for ten seconds or following the pen tip with his gaze. There were extensive concentration check-ups where Fitz had to perform while listening to loud conversations or music, and memory testing that required holding long strings of numbers in his head. The testing for fine motor skills was almost more complicated that managing the holotable, Simmons had said. It wasn't a catastrophe, all in all, but there were problems. Fitz scored fine in the memory checks, for example – but had flown off the handle when Simmons pointed it out to him, saying he should have scored excellent. He was a genius after all. Had been a genius, he had than amended. And when the tests weren't able to measure, he himself claimed to feel that his performance was off. The psychologist Coulson had insisted on assigning to him and Simmons both had tried to point out that with all the stress and Fitz's performance anxiety, it was no wonder he could not concentrate, but it fell flat.

But the root of it all was that Fitz exhibited no desires to return to work. He talked about it often enough, but always as though it was far in the future, and it took Simmons two weeks to realise that he was actually offering excuses to ignore the diagrams and the hard drives she was bringing to him.

"He's terrified that he won't be the same, won't be able to keep up," she had said at dinner that night, eyes puffy and voice yet more high-pitched than her usual. "Neuropsychological tests are basically useless tasks he will never perform in real life. I mean, when was the last time one of us had to make calculations by hand? But failing to solve an engineering problem would be a tragedy for him."

"Give him time," Coulson had said quietly. The face Simmons had pulled was a mixture of knowing how useless the advice was and realising how much it was still needed.

"Just tell him that we miss him, and we will come to visit as soon as he wants us to," offered Skye.

"Oh, he will just tell me that he is very concentrated on his exercises. Of course, they are a little pointless, I keep telling him that designing a better night-night gun would be a much better exercise than randomly playing with numbers, but…"

The smile Simmons had offered was just as bright as any other, but the real measure of how she felt was given when she hurried from the table not five minutes later to seek refuge in the laboratory once more. May seethed. Ward may have lied to Coulson and manipulated her in order to find a way out of their clutches, but if he did not come back of his own volition then the thing that would gall May most would be that he'd robbed Fitzsimmons of their retaliation.

Not that these two would know what to do with it, anyway.

After a couple of days passed, May herself started to have a hard time differentiating between what she believed, knew, and wanted. She had been so sure of her decision the day she let Ward walk free. There had been no shadow of doubt in her mind that he'd obey her, carry out the mission or die trying. It all had made the perfect kind of sense. He had been following her in exactly the same unhealthy, devoted and mindless way he had followed Garrett, and it had felt good to set him on a productive path for a change. The next day started just the same, in the full knowledge that she'd done the right thing.

The second day, she woke up thinking she was the stupidest specialist on the entire planet. There had been no forewarning to it; nothing had really happened, no new intel had arrived. The Fridge was a long way away from the Playground (there were less and less virgin beaches left in the world, not thanks to whoever had decided to set a freaking tower on one of them and make roughly 3000 square kilometre inaccessible in order to hide the contraption). Without any kind of support structure, Ward would need a couple of days just to get there. May knew that… and still the fact that there has been no development on the second day had sent her for a spin.

She went through her exercises, checked with Coulson to make sure no missions were expected of her that day. He had made her the courtesy of not commenting and not setting any deadlines. Most of the time, he carefully avoided any mention of their little wager. It was truly easy, seeing as he had a lot of other worries on his plate.

"I have spoken to Talbot. The three men in the basement are indeed his, gone AWOL after the Centipede raid. The military was looking for them as well, they are completely aware of everything they've stolen."

"We can't…"

"I'm considering giving them back." May frowned. These guys definitely knew where the Playground was located, and of course they'd tell Talbot in their first breath. SHIELD has always been about secrecy…

"Yes. And maybe that's why we failed this bad…"

She had not spoken aloud – she newer slipped this way – but Coulson could apparently read her thoughts now. Not that the train of thought was that difficult to infer.

"He'll want the staff, at the least, now that he knows what it is able to do", she warned.

"He can have it. What use does it have for us? The military will do the same thing with it as we would. First try to study it, and then lock it away. Trust is more important now than funny objects."

The soldiers were transferred to a military prison within the day; Talbot had been gleefully happy to have them back, and also eager to check out the new SHIELD headquarters. Phil had worked out the transfer protocol and denied him access inside the base, but both he and May knew that the entire perimeter of the Playground was being surveyed from the waiting helicopter.

"It's OK, May," Phil had said after the heavy transport chopper took flight. "They had known where the old Headquarters was, too."

She wanted to object, to say that then they were not formally fugitives then, but she had already used her quota of protesting for that week (and probably the one to come) and therefore kept quiet. She flew Coulson to New York to speak with Hill the next day, and again kept her thoughts to herself. A closed congressional hearing would take place shortly, Phil announced when she flew him back three days later. Hill and Potts had arranged that one, which all but assured that SHIELD would get the (unofficial) support it needed to get going. Potts had now been sworn into secrecy surrounding Phil's survival, and the smile on his face as he came on board of the Bus told May how grateful and pleased he was at her help and encouragement. May still thought that Stark should know about his survival too. She had almost mentioned it to Coulson on the flight back, but then quickly figured that Phil's reason for it was simpler than it looked. He was terrified that the billionaire and his Skynet butler would figure something about him that even he still did not know.

The next week was spent chartering the Director up and down the States. May was becoming cranky after three uneventful flights (the Bus was a highly sophisticated, weaponized transport, not a private jet). She ended up announcing that she was not a private pilot by the end of the week. Day fifteen saw her liaising with the Cube. Day sixteen saw her leading a six people team (all specialists) into a recon mission near Philippines. For once, the raid paid off big time. They identified a base with significant number of residual Centipede equipment, which was promptly confiscated. There were no miracle drugs in sight, though, and no signs of coerced workers. Everyone working there was simply paid high, international level wages as opposed to the measly local minimum. May was almost sad for them. It was easy to say that selling your soul for money was never a good option, but it held a different meaning in a place where money literally meant food, and therefore a healthy body to keep said soul from escaping on its own.

They spent a long time going through the compound before blowing it up. None of the guys under May's command proved to be good enough with explosives to set everything off in a way that guaranteed no recovery of the equipment by local governments. May had asked Tripp if he could do it, and got a dismayed look in return.

"I was only with Garrett for nine months. Signed on right after Ward joined your team."

"Why'd he choose you?" May asked, preparing for the struggle and shame she knew her question would get. Tripp, though, surprised her by answering honestly.

"I do not know. And I have thought about it. If there was something he saw in me, if I was special… in a bad way. But I'm kinda the most ordinary guy of all, you know? I do not think he targeted me specifically. It was just a cover, I guess. Garrett had spent a long time pairing with Ward and did not get anyone on for a long time after that. They had this weird father-son relationship. People were about to start wondering."

The 5 years gap in Ward's story was still bothering her as much as it was bothering Phil. Whatever had happened there (and no, May did not think Ward was holding out on the location of a Hydra boot camp—he was too much of a loner to have gone through that at the beginning of his training) had made him follow Garrett to the ends of the Earth, even to very obvious detriment to himself. It was something that smelled more like a personal cult follower than a full-time member of an illegal organization. But whatever it was, May had decided that her time limit would end by the time she came home from this mission. All in all, more than two weeks had passed; enough time to plan, arrive, set up and achieve.

If there was no news of him still, she would swallow her pride and talk to Phil about a worldwide wanted order. Maybe Talbot would be kind enough to see to Ward's future confinement arrangements himself. That is, if anyone managed to capture him.

"I asked around a lot at the beginning, OK?

She had been drifting, paying little attention, and had needed a moment to remember.

"What?"

"I was completely jealous. I wanted that, that tightness with my CO, and Garrett would not shut up about him. It was an all or nothing measuring stick; what Ward could pull, whom Ward could cross off, what risks Ward was able to take… I once base jumped into a fairly suicidal mission that I had already decided to pass on – and I could easily pass on without loss of face, because I had near zero experience in base jumping - because he patted me on the back, said it was perfectly OK, not to worry and he was just going to request Grant instead. "

"He was manipulating you," May said. She thought it was a foregone conclusion, but for all Tripp claimed that he'd thought about it, she could see that the thought itself was a new and uncomfortable one.

"Son of a bitch. I mean, he had no freaking hope to turn me, no hope whatsoever. My entire family breathes war stories, and all I ever wanted was to enter SHIELD. He could have never used me as a Hydra…"

"And still, he most probably did. He was high enough to be running free missions in the time you were together, nobody stopped to ask what and why he was doing the things he did. You should probably stop by the Playground for some questioning."

The look on Tripp's face was one of betrayal, worry and reluctant acceptance.

"I will. I swear though…"

"You are not in trouble. You could not have known. Garrett was Coulson's friend, they had both trained under Fury, and not one of them ever suspected."

Tripp nodded.

"Kind of makes you feel sorry for Ward, doesn't it? I mean, I was freshly level 5 when I started pairing with Garrett, and he was able to make me jump through fire after one month. If he started with Ward as he was just out of the Academy? Poor guy. I heard stories in training. He went through it much quicker than most, so we never actually met in person, but people do little more than compare scores in that place. His were perfect, which considering he never did anything but train? Actually fair. But then, when guys are done pummelling the shit out of one another, they usually go for drinks together. He didn't. He never socialised, couldn't tell a joke from somebody being serious most of the time. No wonder Garrett targeted him." He saw the look May was giving him and was quick to amend: "Not that it excuses his actions or anything".

"He knew Ward since he was fifteen. Set him up for recruitment, actually."

"That… actually makes even more sense."

That night she was still working out how to blow the compound (the local authorities were not helpful, the tech inside it was too cumbersome to take with them, and May had never been an explosives expert) as she went to sleep. She woke up in the middle of the night with a black certainty that Ward was dead. It came to her unbidden; having decided on a deadline, she had put all thoughts of him from her mind. And yet, there she was: bundled in her sleeping sack and wide awake in the middle of the night, just knowing that he had tried and could not pull it off.

She stayed awake for at least another two hours, not trying any technique to go back to sleep but planning how she would do it, if she had to. Wondering if it was even doable. Enough people had escaped Centipede (Quinn, that weird woman Raina) with the knowledge of Ward's arrest for May to know that he'd have no hope to talk his way in. Once compromised, forever tainted. The only access to the Fridge was through the roof. The walls were completely solid; any attempt to get close enough to blow them up would result in the guards and the automated cannons outside to mercilessly target you.

She finally slept, having come up with a couple of possibilities and knowing none of them were close to good, and kept dreaming of the Fridge. In her dream Ward was escorting her there, grinning at the guards inside while exhibiting her with her hands bound behind her back. They opened the doors for him, and as they stepped into the elevator May realised her binds were fake and would fall away. She walked ahead when the elevator stopped, aware of the fact that Ward was looking at her sideways, expectant, waiting. The moment she signalled she wanted to move in he eagerly passed her one of his own guns and turned his back to her to open fire on the guards. She shot him with no hesitation, execution style, a bullet direct to the head. He never had a chance to turn and look, just fell down in the middle of the corridor between May and all Hydra guards with automatic weapons. There was nowhere to hide anymore, and the guards proceeded to slaughter May in the matter of seconds. She woke up to a faint pain in the chest where the dream bullets had stricken her.

The next morning they blew the place up, having evacuated everyone within what was triple the safety radius, and went on their ways. May was home by sundown of the next day, having the disadvantage of flying west this time.

Simmons, Sky and Fitz (probably on a weekend break) were watching some movie in the common room, torn bags of salty snacks all around them. Fitz smiled self-consciously at her and busied himself with more saltines. Skye left out a squeak and jumped up in greeting, but May ignored her.

Coulson, just as always, was to be found in his office. May knocked on the closed door, and this time actually waited until given permission. The formalities ended there; she was very tired, and even the uncomfortable seat in front of the solid desk looked inviting enough under the circumstances.

"It proved to be a very good lead," she said as a preamble to debriefing. He nodded, but she could see his mind was miles away. "What is it? Anything happened?"

A short negation of the head and a set of pressed lips that spoke of a hard decision that was imminent were all the warning May got. She knew what it would be, though, and Coulson's next words left no doubt as to the nature of their predicament.

"The Fridge beacon has been activated."

-A very special thanks to the lovely Bibliophile109 for betaing this for me. The style of this story is now much improved for it!


	8. Chapter 8

"How long ago?" she asked, immediately hyper-aware even though she was more tired than she cared to let on. Coordinating missions was even worse than standing by and listening in. She needed to be in the thick of things, doing something useful, not talking about reasonable risks while others pulled the triggers.

"Twelve minutes. The Cube is on standby waiting for further contact, but so far there has been none."

Somebody in the Fridge was trying to communicate with the outside world, but was either unwilling or unable to elaborate further. It didn't escape May that the situation, regardless of this new development, was not much clearer now than it had been two weeks ago. An activated beacon could mean anything. Mainly, it meant that the main antenna on the Fridge had gone online after going dark after the raid by Hydra. Satellite reports had showed that there wasn't much structural damage on the outside, so the obvious conclusion was that something must have happened in the control center during the attack. And of course, nobody knew how extensive the damage inside the tower was. Would Ward even be able to repair it?

"You think it could be a trap."

"I think that we don't have enough data yet, May."

From the softness of the reply, she guessed Phil was trying to let her down gently. It wasn't necessary, though. Whatever Ward did or did not do, it was the same to her; she wouldn't try to influence Phil to proceed one way or another. And she could see all the potential problems of running to take a look at an unclear signal that wasn't even a standard SHIELD call sign. That one, Ward knew and could have used, and then the meaning of all this would be much clearer.

"We wait," he added just as gently. "If the equipment is malfunctioning, it could take a while to solve it".

Well, Ward was supposed to know how to disarm a nuclear bomb, so he could probably work out the basic functioning of a malfunctioning radio beacon.

Fifteen minutes later the beacon went offline without having emitted any kind of comprehensible message, and remained that way for a little over twenty minutes. By that time, everybody had gathered around the main table in the war room, while the communications specialist Agent Hollow from the Cube was reporting on the progress of the decryption. She had asked if a surveillance mission should be launched, but Coulson has ordered only a remote operated vehicle to remain on standby.

"I didn't know you guys had a mission to retake the Fridge going on," Skye said. "Think there's anything useful there after Hydra laid waste to the place?"

"This is not exactly a SHIELD mission," was Coulson's laconic reply.

The beacon came to life again, spluttering and sneezing like a wet kitten with a cold for some twenty seconds, then was off. The next time, the active phase went on for about a minute. From then on, the emission fluctuated, but the beacon never went completely offline anymore.

"It could - emphasis on could - be an audio feed," reported Agent Hollow. "Working on it now."

"But you have expected something like this to happen," guessed Skye when it became clear that no further information was coming her way.

She was fishing now, but she was typically good at guessing too, and May had expected her to join the dots by now. So far, the girl was not even remotely suspecting what was going on. It was too unlikely, all things considered. She had also not asked about Ward once since he had walked out, probably never expecting to see him again.

"Do you need me here, sir?" asked Simmons after the beacon flickered a couple dozen times without offering any further insight into the situation. It was a neutrally worded question, but the reason behind it was clear. Fitz had not joined them at the 'war table', as Skye had taken to call it, electing to shuffle cards on the sofa instead. He was carefully piling them up in a makeshift card house, working on the third level. It was an exercise to improve his fine motor skills, Simmons had explained briefly and then lingered on how she herself was never able to go beyond the second level.

"Not at all. Go back to your evening. I will let you know if something comes up".

Simmons nodded and went back to the living room, which basically meant she went around the sofa and a Plexiglas window and plopped on the sofa near Fitz.

On, off. On, off. Someone was playing with the switch, or else someone was trying to fix a broken contact somewhere. Or maybe the wind was moving a cable on the roof of the Fridge. The Cube has been listening to the Fridge since Ward's mission started, but nobody had been paying it any attention before. It could well be that the beacon has been doing the same for weeks and nobody even noticed.

Except of course it couldn't be. The first thing one learned as a specialist was that believing in coincidences would kill you just as surely as walking through a minefield. On, off. On, off. Hydra would be listening to these same sounds right now, of course. They had probably set up their own communications system, but it did not mean they would ignore the old one flaring up. And it stood to reason that they knew most of SHIELD's basic call signals, which could hardly have escaped Ward.

Irritating as it was, maybe playing it safe was the way to go.

The decrypted readings were being fed to the Playground in real time. There was indeed an audio feed in there, May realized. Just as the communications officers in the Cube had promised, the whisper in the wind was becoming clearer. Another ten seconds, and everybody could tell without a doubt that it was indeed a human voice. The sound became even clearer...

Two people, talking tersely.

"Do you really... radio her? Have her… all the way back?"

"That is exactly what you need to do."

"Right. Because you boys have never seen Hand angry, have you."

It was unmistakably Ward's voice talking angrily over the waves, communicating with a third party, talking about Hand of all people. May's blood went cold with a feeling she could not easily put a name on. Hand had not been a friend, not even a superior officer - nothing more than a distant colleague - but May had always had the utmost respect for her. The woman was as ruthless as she was competent. Even though, May had never wondered about her exact fate beyond counting her among the victims of Ward and Garrett. And now a fragment of conversation featuring Ward's voice was talking about her in an utmost cold and callous manner. What was she supposed to make of that, apart of dealing with a hot and cold wave of indignation? It was almost enough to wonder if Hand was truly dead, except that she was the kind of person that would never be taken alive… or allow herself to stay alive for too long.

Still, May waited for more words. Ward was using a SHIELD channel for this, which meant he was either very stupid or very devious and eager to flounder it. There was a sudden sizzle of bullets hitting a firm surface, a muffled exclamation of "Hydra".

"Open the door!"

"It's against protocol!"

"I don't care about protocol, open the damn door, you are going to get us killed!"

That made no sense. May watched Coulson rub his face in bewilderment. But the conversation was not over. The sound of what unmistakably was a flying helicopter died down.

"Identify yourself and state your purpose."

"Agent Grant Ward. You know who this is. Hand called it in."

"We have specific orders not to let anyone in without Agent Hand present. So where is she?"

"Where do you think she is? She is heading to a meeting with every high ranking officer still out there. You really want me to radio her? Have her turn her plane around, fly all the way back?"

"It's a recording repeating itself," said Skye. "Going out on a limb, here."

A recording of Ward and Garrett lying their way into the compound. Coulson had acquired the satellite images Ward had erased in the Providence after his round of political manoeuvring, and SHIELD had been privy to the scene that had taken place on the roof of the tower. This had to be the security recording of that moment.

"You think it's meant for us?" asked Coulson doubtfully. It did seem an unnecessarily cheeky thing to do, coming from Ward, considering the enormity of the second chance they had given him.

"We've given him no actual call signs for SHIELD, and he cannot know who is listening," noted May. "And he _is_ identifying himself in a way, is he not?"

"He's identifying himself as a traitorous lowlife, you mean," Skye jumped in. "Why did you let him go? Wait, was he a double agent all along and nobody told me? But he strangled Eric, he can't have been. How do you know this isn't a ruse?""We don't," said Coulson in perfect sync with May.

"Still, it would be a ruse about 10 times more elaborate than needed," she pointed out.

"Which is not unheard of, coming from Hydra."

"All they can hope for is us sending in an unmanned drone. If Ward has come through somehow… It's our fifth base, Phil. We don't have many of them left. It's worth a shot, at least."

"I'm sorry. 'Too elaborate' is just not good enough of an argument. I agree that this call is probably coming from him, but I want concrete proof that it's meant for our ears and that it's signalling the end of a successful mission. Until then, we remain on standby. "

He might be trying to radio for evacuation, May thought but did not say, because Coulson would have already thought it and obviously dismissed it. If he had truly done it, how many operatives did he have to lay low? Was he even standing? The equipment might be way too damaged to record a brand new message, hence forcing him to recycle bits that were already in the system. The message repeated itself once again, peppered with pauses as the emission would simple shut off and resume after a short while. Must be the antenna malfunctioning, then. Ward and Garrett had hidden right behind it, faking taking cover from the helicopter fire.

"May," said Fitz from behind her. When she did not acknowledge him, he repeated her name more forcefully. "May."

"What?"

"No… Not you. 'May.' It's what the message says. The second one that's being overlaid."

"What are you talking about?" asked Coulson a little bit more forcefully that was warranted, taking into account that Fitz had spoken up about something SHIELD related for the first time.

"The beacon itself is functioning in a bastardized Morse, so slow and uneven that the Cube algorithm is probably looking right through it. On and off phases are not even in their duration. It's the classic pattern. Dash dash, dot dash, dash dot dash dash. It's cycling for the fourth time in ten minutes. The next one will be a short dot."

The beacon went off again, and in the following silence all eyes remained fixed on Fitz. He was kneeling on the sofa and leaning on the headrest, looking for all the world like he had just said something completely obvious. By the time he had correctly predicted eight fluctuations in a row ("one chance out of a hundred and twenty-eight," piped in Simmons), it became clear that he was right. Skye smiled softly at the engineer, who was so engrossed into solving the puzzle that he had yet to notice that he was solving it. "I still do not understand. May what? Mayday? May I do something? May is a nice month?"

"It could be an acronym", added Simmons excitedly, having eyes only for her friend and none to the war table, where the Cube specialists have completely cleaned up the emission, that proved to be exactly what they thought it to be: a short fragment of the surveillance of the entrance to the Fridge taken on the day of the fall. She was never going to be safe in the field by her own, thought May affectionately. She wasn't even noticing the cleaned up video now playing on all screens, of a good enough quality to show Ward pushing a bound Garrett one way or another. "M.A.Y. Three letters are frequently acronyms, though I will admit to having a hard time coming up with a meaning for it. And there are a couple of people with that name, but nobody important enough. There is also a Cape May in New Jersey…."

May and Coulson shared a knowing look. It was either a done deal, or a genius trap.

"He's identified himself and the intended recipient of the message, and has hinted at the takedown, Phil," noted May. "The three things you wanted. It's worth a look, at the very least."

Coulson sighed. "Launch the drones. I want a full perimeter sweep first, then an in depth exploration, unmanned. Leave no stone unturned. You have one hour".

"Understood, sir."

The Cube went offline after a short while. There was nothing much to do now until the clean up party showed up, and it would take hours to sort out everything. Sure enough, the mission control informed them that the unmanned drone had picked up images of a man sitting on the parapet, waiting patiently with his hands carefully visible and no weapons in sight as the drone made a round around him. Curiously enough, there seemed to be a hole roughly the size of an helicopter in one of the walls of the compound, situated rather close to the ground. The helicopter was indeed half protruding from the inside. The preliminary report of the interior of the Fridge hinted at a big ass explosion having taken place inside before the drone lost contact amid all the concrete.

All in all, it did not clear as many questions as it raised.

"Send a clean up party." Coulson's jaw was set as he issued his next set of orders.

"At once, sir. Should we approach as friend or foe?"

"Anyone who does not surrender immediately, or stays inside the Fridge after you have landed, should be dealt with using lethal force on sight."

"Roger that. It looks like Ward doesn't plan to offer resistance. What should we do with him if he surrenders?"

They knew him, of course. Or of him, which was the same thing at this point. Phil had wanted to keep things at impersonal level, but there were far too few SHIELD agents left for that. They were a tight family now. And in tight families, people's likes and dislikes and loyalties had to be dealt with very carefully. May wondered if Phil was aware of that.

"Bring him to me."

They brought Ward in alive and walking under his own power, which considering all the emotions running high meant he had been on his best meek, wordless behaviour toward the Cube operatives. Still, the forceful dragging and the size of the escort party that showed up could fool anyone into thinking that he had run away and had then fought teeth and nail against being delivered to the headquarters. He looked like that, too. There was a streak of dried blood down the entire right side of his neck. Short as his hair was, it had turned wild, and May suspected it was because there was dried blood in it, too. His eyes were both over-bright and glassy, the telltale look of somebody who had spent way too long in overdrive. He was no longer wearing the white cotton T-shirt he had walked out in. In fact, he was clad in a fairly standard assault gear, or what was left of it after SHIELD guys had stripped off the Kevlar parts and bound him like Phil's personal Christmas present. Simmons gawked openly, caught by surprise by the commotion of it all, but quickly stepped aside when one of the guys dragging Ward knocked a bowl off the dining table. Fitz had gone back to the rehabilitation facility, citing exhaustion and curfews. He looked rather overwhelmed by everything, and nobody had the heart to press for more. Skye came running as well, from the gym by the looks of her, but was made to step back and allow space for the delivering committee. Ward was marched straight to the Coulson's office, looking directly forward the entire time—except when he lingered on May a second too long and earned himself a shove forward.

Simmons wisely shied away from it all, taking refuge in the lab for the time being. Skye started following the committee into the aisle leading to the office, but finally had the insight to fall back.

"So you didn't let him go after all. Good to know you managed to catch him," she said, the look on her face positively gleeful. "I should've tried to stop him when he was walking out, I knew it. He had a gun, but I could have stopped him. He's a coward on top of everything else. What was he doing at the Fridge?"

"Coming through," May answered curtly.

Skye´s entire face fell with such quick and crumpling shame that it became instantly clear that none of her previous words had come from the bottom of her heart. May was stuck by the fact that the girl had been, most probably, trying to mirror her. The hate-fu, she'd called it before admitting that she wasn't any good at it-as if her ability to see the good in people was a weakness, something to be ashamed of.

If only she knew how much May still missed her own.

"Then why…?"

"Because even if he comes through his entire life, he can never make up for anything."

Skye forced another bitter smile, an ugly insincere expression put on a face where it didn't belong. The girl that had boarded the Bus one year ago would have protested vehemently, spewed some nonsense about good deeds balancing out the bad ones. She would still probably do so, for the likes of Mike Peterson. That was the thing about betrayal, though: it never came from enemies. The depth of the present burn was directly proportional to the depth of her past affection.

"Serves him right."

"He's betrayed a system that doesn't abide being betrayed, and he's been overrun by it. Trust me, he will never fully recover. Your anger is nothing compared to that. Do yourself a favour and don't feed it any more than you absolutely have to."

They both watched from afar as Ward was hurried into Coulson´s office. Skye's face was once again an exercise in misery, but at least that emotion was her own and not the indifferent mask she thought she should be wearing. There was only a quiet, soul deep sadness left, and that – that May could easily believe. If Ward had only let go of his conditioning once, just for a little bit, everything could have been very different. And the saddest thing was that May was beginning to truly believe that he had wanted to. Tried to, even. More than once. There had been something truly desolate in the way he counted himself accountable for failing two completely opposite missions, and he seemed to mourn harming the team almost as strongly as he was mourning having failed Garrett. But that wasn't how it all worked, was it?

"Thank you," she heard Coulson saying from the inside of the office. There were too many people there now, and May remained outside, waiting for her chance to come in. "You can leave now. Refuel here, Agent Koenig will help you with that. Debrief at your home base."

Everyone filed out, and May could once again see Ward sitting in the chair in front of Coulson´s desk. It was almost as if the last two weeks hadn't happened. She made a move to come inside, but was met with a hand gently raising and keeping her at bay.

"I will take care of this from now on," Phil announced.

May set her jaw. It was the punishment for her outburst earlier, and she couldn't really argue with it, not in good faith. She wondered if he was shouldering the responsibility because he truly wanted to, or because he still thought she was compromised.

"I know him better…" she pointed out.

"Yes, you do. And that's the problem, May. One that I mean to solve. Don't worry. Ward and I will have a long and hard talk, you have a good day."

It was a dismissal if she ever had heard one. May nodded and was off to write her own debrief on the Thailand operation. It was already half through despite the fact that she was half dead on her feet, having had no downtime since she flew the plane to the base herself. She had stayed fully alert waiting for Ward to be delivered back to them, thinking about everything that needed to be said and asked and the terms she would need to set up for further occasions – at the very least some emergency codes –, but apparently she was not in charge of his fate anymore. She guessed she ought to feel relieved. Grateful to Phil, even. She was not.

Still, the words weren't going to type themselves, and May went on to a concise description of the performance of all six agents under her command. Three of them had been rookies, one had been paired with Tripplett, and two (guy and girl) had been shadowing an older, bulky field operative formerly stationed at the Hub. Their performance was good enough, May thought. They had known when to stand by and when to lie low, which was the first important skill new, overeager field agents had to learn. All in all, it had been a somewhat awkward, but ultimately straightforward mission.

The mission she had saddled Ward with was on the forefront of her mind, though. The enormity of the task she had made him undergo was becoming clear as she mentally went over the drone images. Even knowing what she knew now – that he had at some point crashed a helicopter into the building, and that the place had looked like it had exploded from the inside – she was no closer to guessing how he had done it.

Ward could apparently plan a solo multi-phase mission from the bottom up, including side missions to acquire external military resources, but he did not know how to say no to a full blown maniac. Or, worse still, how to say yes to himself.

There was a suspicious lack of noise coming from the office area. The first ten minutes May had been on high alert, fully prepared to storm back in if the situation escalated as it had done before. She had gradually relaxed, though. She was in the process of marking the performance of one Agent Libby Jones – a long haired, slim, tall and unusually pretty girl, formerly a communications officer from the Cube who had requested a field position after the fall, when there was a soft knock on her bunk door. It was almost completely closed, but not quite – May never closed any door completely if she could help it, because the false sense of security was not worth missing the approaching steps of an enemy.

"Come in."

Sure enough, Ward was standing outside, handcuffs-free but still as battered as he had been brought to the base. He smiled when she looked at him; a short, apprehensive expression. She must have betrayed her surprise at that, because it was off as quickly as it came, and Ward made sure to look down in the direction of her knees instead.

"Yes?"

She was startled to see that almost an hour had passed. Had Coulson been at it for that long? Ward seemed weary, now even more so than before, but there was no negative or positive context to it, no telling if he was happy or sad or something else entirely. He looked like he was just hanging there by what might or might not be a strong enough thread.

"Director Coulson wants to see you in his office," he said evenly. "You should bring Agent Simmons as well."

"Why?"

"To discuss my future status. He will allow me to run more missions. He'll be watching me."

And there it was. It was a generous offer; one May had hoped for, but hadn't actually expected Phil to make. It made sense for everyone involved. SHIELD could use a black-ops specialist that they could wash their hands of any time they wanted, and Ward… Their conversation from long ago in Ward's cell came to mind, with him repeatedly asking how long would his imprisonment go on and shutting up completely right after learning he would spend his life locked up. May understood him much better now, for better or for worse. There was literally no purpose to him in his own mind except to fight on behalf of others; he was not afraid of being locked up with no orders to carry out per se – but he was plainly unable to process it having to be his perpetual fate.

She knew better than to ask if Coulson had promised Ward anything in return – she knew he hadn't. Still, there was a question that needed to be asked, one May would have never thought of before, but knew better than to not ask now.

"Is that what you want?"

He nodded curtly after sending a fleeting look in her direction.

"Now once again, and this time truthfully."

He tensed up, obviously torn.

"Do you know what will happen if you don't?" He nodded again, but for once May knew better than to just assume. "Tell me."

"He said I would be transferred to a military prison. He said… said he'd testify that I've given you intel, and that I've helped you out twice."

That did sound fair. May was pleased to know that Phil had thought about it and had made a point to explain it to Ward. It looked like he had gotten his shit together in a rather remarkable way. Which left only one thing to be discussed.

"He killed Garrett, you know. Mike Peterson caved his face in while Coulson and Fury watched, and when he tried to revive himself with the Deathlok assembly line, Coulson shot him with the 084 from Peru."

And there it was. Ward had a very good control of his facial expressions and his overall posture, as long as he was paying enough attention to exercise said control over them. Which was almost always – more than a week of torture had gone on before May saw him drop any of it. Even now, he didn't move at all, but his body went rigid with tension. May could almost hear the metallic clang as a curtain fell over Ward's eyes, shutting out the slight brightness they had acquired while talking with her and leaving a blank canvass behind.

"You would have learned anyway, sooner or later," she chided him. People tended to think the worst of her, and Ward had every reason to, after everything she did to him. She wasn't trying to be cruel, though. "And you will work under him, not under me. I want to know that you will be able to take his orders, knowing that. And you yourself need to know it too, before you can make that choice." Ward's grip on the bunk door became tighter, his knuckles turning white. "You will also die much sooner and much more painfully if you stay with us, while on the other hand you might greatly benefit from a violence free environment. Do the time, however long it is, lose the hardwired killer mentality. Who knows, you might even get a shot at a normal life sometime down the road. You have to think hard about how you want this to work out for yourself, Ward."

She was fully prepared to press on until he gave a clear enough answer. May understood the generosity and the leap of faith that Phil had made for him; it stunned her that he would allow Ward anywhere close to Skye or Fitzsimmons. Precisely because of that, she just knew that he had worded the offer like a hard order, and "orders" and "Ward" did not work for the best.

"I'll do it. I'll stay here." It had come out quick and too eager. May did not trust it one bit, but she also had no way of disapproving of it. All in all, she had given Ward a fair chance. The decision did not surprise her in the slightest. "And you don't need to worry; I won't endanger the team. Simmons will install a kill switch."

"A what?"

"You don't need to worry about me getting any funny ideas," he repeated quickly, eager and almost pleading, as if he had taken her demand to choose his fate as a threat to kick him out for would-be bad behaviour. "Director Coulson will put me down instantly if I ever step out of line."

"He said that."

He did not. May knew Phil, she knew he would not utter these words, knew he was doing his best to walk a line so narrow it was invisible to most people to the best of his ability. Knew he had gotten over his anger long enough to consent to Ward getting his second chance, however harsh the conditions. He had not said these words – but they were exactly that words that Ward had heard. And now he was looking at May as solemnly as he could with his face and clothes covered in dried blood, beseeching her to believe not in him, but in the security that the `disconnect in case of malfunctioning` button provided.

May wondered is she would ever stop feeling sick, looking at him.

"He sent you to Simmons to talk about it?"

"No, he said you should find her and bring her to him. I am not to interact with anyone here unless directly addressed."

Oh, Phil. The conditions were fair – they would still be fair if he had made Ward sleep on the floor of his old cell, as he had done all the time he had been imprisoned there. The man was a cold blooded killer. And still there was something indisputably cruel in all this setup, cruel to absolutely everyone from Fitzsimmons to Ward to May herself. Agent Coulson did not do it as a way to give former Agent Ward a chance, she realized now. Director Coulson did it because SHIELD needed the heavy firepower.

May did not say anything in some time, mulling over the implications. Ward did not move from the threshold, going only as far as looking briefly up at her when he realised no words were coming.

"Well then, I'll tell Simmons to check your…"

"I'm not injured."

Spoken with the finality that rolled right over silly things like truths and lies to become the only reality that mattered. He would not go to Simmons for help, and May would not make him. She wondered if she could make Jemma do her part, if she voiced a protest. Probably not.

"Very well. Go shower and change. You may have the room you last slept in."

"Thank you."

It downed on May that he had probably been trying to get a read on her, looking for her approval or at least her opinion, all this time. After all, it had been her who he radioed after completing a mission she had sent him on. He had seen May and Coulson disagree, and now Coulson was literally holding his reins while May looked on. She wondered how long he had been waiting to hear something he could interpret as an order from her. Probably a while, as she had been dead set on forcing him to make his own choice. All of her good intentions from earlier suddenly seemed very naïve. It didn't work like that, did it? If it was easy, Ward would have done it himself. For Skye, at least. May was sure of it.

"Ward?" He was already off in the direction of the assigned bunk room, the furthest one at the far way of the corridor, but he stopped immediately and turned around to look at her. "I will want a report about how you did it, in the Fridge. Come find me after you are done. You don't need permission."

The smile he gave her was short and exhausted and stayed in his eyes without reaching the rest of his face, but it was real and full of relief. May could have sworn it was the same one he had given Garrett the only time she had witnessed the older man compliment his fighting skills.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So, lovelies, here is another chapter! Things are brightening up slowly, even though it does not feel like it most of the time. But I did promise a redemption story, and I am here to deliver! I have a very important exam coming up, so the next two weeks will be slow. If you like this story enough to be upset about it, remember that feeding the author is a good way to ensure the quick delivery of the next chapter. Think of me as Ward if it helps, looking up at May with his sad eyes and waiting for a minimal sign of approval...


	9. Chapter 9

The briefing with Coulson had been not been especially informative, serving only to confirm what Ward had already told May. Phil did not seem very sure of his decision, acting irritated, looking tired and worn and trying not-quite-successfully to hide all these facts. He had not been sleeping well ever since they established the HQ on the Playground, but it only got worse recently. The Fridge had looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off inside - some kind of a bomb had, for sure - and the images that were starting to pour in from the recovery teams were not particularly informative on the types of projects Hydra had been working on here. One particular set of photos had gotten Phil's attention, though. Lines and triangles and circles, all scattered on a wide white surface in a loose imitation of an electric circuit. It was the same pattern that had been engraved on a Plexiglas door of the Bus, the same one Ward had photographed in the remote Byelorussian town doing the mission thought for one Amador, Akela.

Coulson had only taken one look at the photographs presented on the screen of the war room before absconding with them in the direction of his own office, where he proceeded to obsess over them some more as far as May could tell.

"Level 9 stuff?" Skye had joked upon seeing the closed off look on the Director's face while deleting the images off the main server and elevating the security clearance on the entire operation. "Wow, AC, relax, it looks mostly like Fitz's drunken scribbles, and all of us have actually seen this stuff before."

"The security has been very relaxed around here in the last weeks," had been the tense reply. "And going lax is something we cannot afford. The threat of Hydra is out there, growing stronger every day. The security levels were one of the basic pillars of information management of SHIELD, they shouldn't be neglected. This isn't a joking matter, Skye!"

"OK, OK."

Skye had smiled and made the joking gestures of surrender, but May could tell she was a little put off and a lot worried by the outburst. She was not alone in disliking the obvious symptoms of fatigue Phil was exhibiting. Half of Coulson's mind was still on the cipher even now, from what May could tell. She had suggested that Ward would maybe know something about the writings found on the Bus, and Phil had sighed tiredly.

"I already asked. Apparently Garrett wrote them not an hour after being injected with the serum. To hear Ward tell the story, he went completely mad almost instantly."

"It makes sense."

"No it does not! Garrett was a bloodthirsty maniac long before the serum. He was not made crazy by the cure, he died being exactly the same manipulative bastard he had always been. He came up with some outlandish speech about seeing the Universe near the end, but you know what? He was the guy who excelled at roping others into doing his bidding and making it look like it was their idea all along. He could have just invented it to throw myself and Fury off. I would not put it past him. After we found the serum and it became clear the Skye would live, when he was all set to take Quinn to the Fridge, he asked me if I would have thrown the bastard off the plane had she died, like I had promised. It made me think for a second. I tried to picture myself doing it. I thought about the answer, and it was a very uncomfortable one. And then, as I was about to say something I would probably regret, I realized something. I had actually never promised to throw Quinn off the Bus if Skye died. Garrett had. And he had the gall to turn it around and make it sound like my idea, make me almost agree with it. Just for the experiment's sake. Just to mess with me."

She could see where this was leading. It was not that hard to determine.

"He was a monster before the serum, and he became a worse one after it. It won't happen to you, Phil. It matters who we are."

"Does it?"

"It does."

All fight seemed to go out of Coulson after that. Gone was the formidable SHIELD director, the man who could lecture about good and evil for hours and sound so sure of himself. He looked worn and threadbare, the last remains of old convictions unraveling and threatening to leave a void behind.

"I did not see it, and I have known him for decades. Fury did not see it, and he had trained John. How was Ward supposed to, if he was just a teen? And worse yet, how am I supposed to risk Jemma's safety, and Skye's happiness, and Fitz' recovery to right a wrong that is so old and so ingrained, there is no way back from it?"

"He is not going to hurt the team. Trust me on this."

"He already has."

"Then leave it to Fitzsimmons and to Skye think about. They have more to say about Ward than you and I have. It's a principle for us, but for them, it's personal. And do not forget that this is war. They have to grow up if they want to be part of it. What did Simmons say to you about the kill switch?"

"That she'll have it ready by tomorrow morning."

"Then she's made up her mind about it, don't you think? And you have made it extensively clear that he is not to interact with them. It will be fine. And Phil? You can be his handler, I will not oppose you in that, but you have to promise me you aren't going to send him on a suicide mission without..."

"Who do you think I am, May?"

"SHIELD's Director. Someone who will not hesitate to put one enemy life on the line if one ally or one innocent could be saved. But you misunderstand me. You can give him as many suicide missions as you want, and as many no-extraction conditions as you want, as long as you do it to his face. Do not lie to him. Do _not_ become a second John Garrett to him."

He did not nod immediately, and May was grateful for it. Because by the time he did, she knew that she had come through to him, that Phil understood. Caring for the SHIELD wellbeing was his job, but caring for his own soul? There were times May was more worried about him than about Skye or Fitzsimmons, to be honest. She had learned her lesson about hurt and hate with Ward, or she liked to think she had. Now Phil wanted to treat that minefield all by himself, appointing himself as vindictive protector of people who might not need all that much protection.

The failsafe turned out to be a round thin device that could have passed for a pacemaker, had its function not been exactly the opposite one. Everybody was reunited in the laboratory in a dark parody of all the times Ward had been hurt on a mission and the team assembled to watch Simmons patch him up. This time there were no commentaries, no questions. Skye´s lips were a thin line, her arms crossed defensively at her chest. Koenig had come by, looked on for a second and was off before May could make a read on him. Coulson had slid inside soundlessly and was now perched on the furthest table he could find, looking for all purposes like the menacing Director he was supposed to be. Simmons was the only one who was behaving like she usually did, going from place to place, gesticulating and talking animatedly in science-speak. Now that Fitz wasn´t there, she was still doing it, though the talking was mostly to herself. At times, she was even talking to her lab equipment. What she did not do was talk to Ward or glance in his direction. May had wondered. Now she had her answer.

Ward was sitting on the examination table, eyes down, hands curled loosely at his sides. For once he didn't act wary or closed off. Indifferent was the word, like he didn't know half the people gathered in the room. May and Coulson, he acknowledged briefly. Skye, Simmons and Koenig, he did not. May had seen the "compartmentalization" he was capable of firsthand, but this was a whole next level of creepy and unhealthy. He was able to tune out entire chunks of space by the looks of it, obeying Coulson's orders to keep away from the team the best of his - sadly impressive - ability. It was a display right out of a nightmare, the complete stillness of his body and the forced absence of any kind of emotion in his eyes.

When Simmons curtly told him to take off his shirt, it became visible that his elbows and forearms were covered in small cuts that testified to a time recently spent crawling, which still did not explain anything regarding the takeover of the Fridge. He had not put one foot outside of his bunk all day after his conversation with May, obviously waiting for the summons to the lab room, and May had not deemed it necessary to seek him out for now.

"I will implant this subcutaneously, the cut will go right over the left nipple so it will not be visible unless someone knows where to look. The wound should close in about five days. You should refrain from intense physical activity until then." Simmons had finally stopped fluttering around and stopped right in from of Ward. The deep breath she took before addressing him escaped no one. "Any attempt at tampering with the device can result in it discharging. Whoever holds the switch will have the power to send you into cardiac arrest, which is lethal in under a minute time. Do you understand?"

Coulson held up his hand, showing the little black box he had between his fingers. Ward looked up before nodding curtly.

"Any failure to report on established times during a mission will result in my activation of it", said Coulson. "You will be confined to this base between missions. You may use the common floors, but I recommend you limit your presence there to the strictly necessary occasions. Go AWOL and I will not spare one second wondering why, or how." Skye moved a little where she stood, obviously uncomfortable with what she was hearing, but Coulson went on after sparing her only half a look. "Any violent behavior toward a member of this team, in fact, any funny moves or words or glances at all, will result in my activation of it. You have killed family members of people who work here. If I think you are gearing up to anything similar again, I will not ask. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Ward answered hastily, his eagerness morphing into hesitation at the silence that followed his words. "Thank you, sir," he added a little more uncertainly after fleeting look in May's direction.

"Do you agree to it?" Ward had already agreed, and May was sure that Phil was repeating the words purely for Skye´s benefit. Her sick pallor and her unprecedented silence during the entire scene were becoming difficult to ignore. "You will be transferred to a military prison otherwise. I said I would write a report on everything you've done to collaborate with the ongoing Hydra investigation, and I mean it."

"You are supposed to answer the question". Curiously, it was Simmons who broke the silence this time. She put the surgical tools on a tablet and forcefully pushed the tablet at Ward. The anti-pacemaker was a dull mated color, two cables sticking out of it. Ward looked a little up, eyeing the tray, then fleetingly at Coulson and the remote he was holding in his hand."This is a prototype. This thing can kill you if it malfunctions. You cannot ever go through a security gate, or near a magnetic resonance. A direct hit in your chest area can dislodge it, resulting in electrocution. And there is probably a heap of other disclaimers I should make, but I cannot think of any right now. I am a scientist, not an executioner, if that even interests anyone at all. I will not proceed if you don´t tell me in your own words that you agree with it."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Burst out Skye. "Is nobody going to say it? This is Hydra technology. And you guys know that. I mean, I wore that stupid dog tag for several months, but the only thing it did was prevent me from using electronics. There was no kill on misbehaving kind of deal. Because if there had been? I would have hightailed out of SHIELD at the first opportunity. You don't make people change sides based on sticks, every once in a while you've gotta give them carrots. And really, what happened to the review boards and trials and independent judges who, you know, don't have sick teammates to avenge? Because this is not..."

"Skye, now is not the time." Coulson started with impatience in his voice. "This is for your safety as well."

"Why don't you let me decide on my own safety? This is torture, guys, plain and simple. This is exactly like the Spy Eye."

"It is not negotiable! If he wants to stay and try to make things right..."

"I want to," interrupted Ward. "Please. I am grateful at the opportunity. I will do whatever I have to stay."

He was eerily good at avoiding looking at anybody though all of it, always excepting Coulson and May herself. Even Simmons, who was fluttering right in front of him, was part of the void zone where nothing registered. He did look fleetingly at May for reassurance after saying that. She nodded, though she was not sure if the sentiment was real or something he thought they wanted to hear from him. She very much doubted he had learned to process things like opportunities overnight, nor did she expect him to suddenly believe in having his opinion counted in. What he could do was lie with the best of them, and he had obviously grasped the fact that doing it would settle the matter in a way that would please most people gathered there.

He was definitely able to feel remorse, though. He had even expressed it to Coulson once when pushed into it.

"Everything will be fine if you behave," May assured him tiredly.

Ward nodded and lied down wordlessly. Simmons signed while sparing one last tentative glance at Skye and proceeded to break open a vial of local anesthesia and staring at Ward's heart monitor for a moment. His heartbeat was regular and very slow, to be expected from a young healthy male used to intense physical activity. May was uncomfortably stuck by the memory of exactly the opposite moment; her hand on his chest pinning him down while he resisted, his heart jumping so fast she could not tell one heartbeat from the next.

"OK, I am going to put it in now. You may notice some arrhythmia, which is normal and not dangerous in the laboratory setting. We have a defibrillator here, we can jump start you at any time. Which will not be the case afterwards. If you feel anything similar in the future... Well..." Simmons trailed off, having talked herself into a corner. "Stop whatever you are doing and lie down immediately, I guess."

The entire procedure took all of five minutes. There was no misstep in Ward's heartbeat, not during installation and not as he sat up again, moving his shoulder to test the range of motion around the freshly stitched up cut.

"Thank you," he said quietly to Simmons, but his gaze was again on Coulson and the little device he was holding in his hand. "Shall I test it for you, sir?"

Coulson's face was an illustration of the popular saying about having to lie in the bed one made for himself. Skye looked positively livid at this point, but it was Simmons who left out an actual outraged squeak.

"What? No!"

"You said yourself it would be safe here. And it's a simple tap out, you let go when you can´t hold on anymore. I've done it dozens of times in resistance training. Ask May, she'll have done it too." May had not. She was not a black op specialist, and her resistance training did not include counter interrogation techniques. Or maybe it had only become a thing at SHIELD after she had moved to desk duty. "This is for my benefit as well. I need to know what it feels like, so it can't take me by surprise if it accidentally malfunctions."

"You know what it feels like," seethed Skye before turning to Phil. "He knows. Mike hit him with one of those, remember?"

In the end, it was Phil's call, and he made it by walking the two steps that separated him from Ward and putting the switch into his palm. Ward nodded, let himself sink back to the table, took a deep breath. There was not much more forewarning than that. No sound, no light, just a fist closing up and two or three seconds of nothing happening. Then his body convulsed once. His head rolled to the side, and the switch clattered to the floor, having fallen from lax fingers in the midst of the deepest silence there ever has been heard on the Bus. The flat line of the heart monitor wavered on the main screen as Simmons chewed on her lip and wriggled her hands nervously. Apparently though, as soon as the switch stopped being activated it proceeded to reset itself. The beeping on the monitor came back and immediately sped up just as Ward could be heard taking a harsh breath. His right hand crept up to press against his ribcage and the device, until he caught himself and stilled the movement.

"Four seconds until loss of conscience, eight until successful restart," announced Simmons. "Remember when you would tell everyone how you were dead for eight seconds, Agent Coulson? This is actually the same thing. Isn't it weird?"

Ward had sat up again by then, cringing as much as he thought he could get away with - which wasn't much at all. He then proceeded to slowly bend down to retrieve the switch that had clattered away under the table. His movements were sluggish and he was using the table for support, which resulted in the surgical tray clattering loudly when he leaned too much onto it. There was a muttered sorry, after which he turned to Phil to give him the switch.

"Can I go now?"

"Yes, sure, go" said Simmons even though the question was not directed at her. "Remember to come by tomorrow to take a look at your stitches. And put some disinfectant on the cuts on your arms. You know where I keep it."

Ward nodded, putting on his shirt and following through with the instructions before leaving the lab as wordlessly as he had come. There was a lanyard for him, dangling from his neck loosely. Nobody made any comment about him having to wear it, or making sure to never take it off, but May imagined it was implicit in Phil's instructions. Maybe he had threatened to terminate Ward if he ever took it off. He had given a lot of thought to the setup and the safety of the younger agents, even if it looked like said agents were more put off than grateful at the measures at hand. Coulson was now fidgeting with the switch, twirling it in his hands uncomfortably before putting the thing inside its little box and then inside his jacket pocket.

Skye looked like she wanted to go after Ward for a minute, but ended up staying to help Simmons put back the surgical equipment. Together they disposed of the bloodied bandages and the needles, all the while carefully avoiding looking at Phil or May or even at each other. The lab atmosphere was once again heavy with unsaid words, until the verbose tendency got the better out of Simmons.

"Well, all done here. Mission accomplished, I guess, device running and ready. It was the spookiest thing I have ever done, I have to say" she said with a little tremulous laugh. "But on the bright side, Fitz is going to be so very happy when I tell him."

May could never get a definitive read on Simmons. The girl was as transparent as she was strange, and as obedient in her daily life as unbending and passionate about all things science. She was the one member of the team May could most easily imagine being resentful and afraid of Ward, both before the reveal (Science and Ops had that eternal rivalry going on, with the brainy people proving themselves truly vicious on more than one occasion by overcompensating their perceived helplessness in the field). After everything Ward had done, May would have expected Simmons to be truly vengeful. The girl definitively had it in her, if only for Fitz' sake. Still, thinking that Fitz would be happy with the actual setup seemed like a strange sentiment.

"What?" Simmons continued, probably having noticed the strange look Skye was giving her as well. "Of course he will be happy, he was the one who called it after all and you know how much he loves being in the right. He said something must have happened between Garrett and Ward, and, well, it is very much the obvious conclusion by now."

"What do you mean, something happened?" asked Skye.

"Oh, really? Just look at how he holds himself. No sane person would react so little to being literally rigged to die at the whim of another. His survival instinct if off, his affection is completely flat, he seems to have no initiative whatsoever. All he's doing right now is following the contextual clues from people around him. I am a biochemist, even if I did five semesters of medicine after I decided I wanted to go into the field. I only have the basest understanding of human psychology, but he has all the obvious symptoms of either an acute shock or a severe grief reaction."

"He's been taken prisoner by people who he's double-crossed. He's afraid of the consequences…"

"He is not afraid. Fear unlocks fight or flight instincts, it does not paralyze people. Much less people who are trained to be literal killing machines. He is lost without Garrett. Literally lost. Unable to function. Which is both difficult to even imagine, coming from a fully grown man who can kill with his left pinky, and completely undeniable. _And_ it begs the very uncomfortable question of what could have happened to him to have destroyed him so thoroughly, and how the hell nobody ever noticed something was up."

"We noticed," peeped in Skye gloomily. "We just thought it was funny and made jokes about him being a robot. Doesn't seem so funny anymore, knowing he killed seven people because we were never the ones he was loyal to."

"We could not have known," soothed May. ¨He was too good at pretending. Best espionage marks since Romanoff".

"Well, he is shit at pretending now."

"He has a catastrophic case of Stockholm syndrome. All he had ever known is gone. If you left him alone now he´d probably just sit there staring at the walls, starving himself out of depression and negligence."

"Gemma… You have to calm down."

"I'm not defending him, mind you." She was hugging herself, angrily monologing in front of three stunned people. "I have nightmares about that plane almost every night. I dream about falling, and about swimming up and losing my grip on Fitz. I am the last person who would want to excuse Ward. In fact, I am more afraid of him now than I ever was before. You know why? Because as long as I could keep imagining his essence being evil, I could deal with it. I could reflect on that evil and know that while it could touch my body, it could not touch my soul. That I was good, I was different, I was another species altogether from the man who saved me from one fall and then tried to kill me through another. We spent two hours freezing in the ocean before rescue came, did you know that? I don´t even remember most of it. But I know that he had his arms around me the entire time, and he asked me a hundred questions about the antiserum even though it did not understand any of it. And after I did the autopsy on Eric Koenig, I told myself not to think about it anymore, that some people are just evil, and that everything until that day had simply been a lie."

She rubbed her nose and looked up. "But that's not how it was, was it? Because he wasn't born evil. And that thought is what scares me the most when I look at him now. That he didn't hold me in the ocean for hours just because he had to keep up his act. That something happened to him, something took hold of him, strangled him, mangled him to the point of no recognition and made him into that other guy. I do not know what it was. The truth is, I don't want to know. I don't want to think about it, or hear about it, or see him, or be near him, but not because I hate him. It's because… he hurts me. I want him gone, so that I never have to remember that evil isn't this static thing that only happens to others. That nobody is safe from it, that it can possess any soul if the circumstances are dire enough. Maybe mine, if Fitz had died. Maybe Skye's, if she had let Ward die in front of her. And I realize that it´s a callous and cold thing to say. Just look at me, giving you all a lecture in morals. I should be the first one to give him a second chance, should I not? Logically, as a scientist. But I cannot help it. I cannot do it. I just want him gone. I just want…" She started crying in an ugly, hiccupping and desolate way, while everyone just stared at her in awe. The little fiery Jemma Simmons. Always a surprise to her. May did not even know what to say. It was a relief when Phil crossed the distance and hugged the girl, pulling her tightly toward himself.

"You aren't callous, Jemma. You are kind, and thoughtful, and _brave_. You're perfect, and we are very lucky to have you."

She cried a little more. She, who had not cried waiting for the Asgardian virus to blow her brain apart. Skye was quick to substitute Coulson's stunted effort at comfort with a true girl-hug. She was good at it, May thought. It was time to give them some time alone.

"I am sorry. I really am. I'm normally not the one for useless emotions. It's... I don't even know what it is," she heard Jemma hiccupping quietly as she made her way out of the laboratory. "Everything is wrong. Every single thing – Fitz and you and me and Ward - and I should be the one able to fix it. You don´t know this stuff, Skye, and Coulson and May do not know it either. If they tried to fix it, they would probably only make it worse. I should be the one. But I have no clue how to make it better."

"Maybe it´s easier than you think. You know, I have no medical degrees to back this up, but I guess that if evil is a spreading thing, then goodness must be too. Maybe being good it the only thing you ever need. Just… being good together. It sounds so corny, I know." May could hear Skye laughing self deprecatingly. She stopped to listen to her. "I really thought I would feel so much better hating. It works for May so I thought… you know. I really gave it a try. But it just doesn't work for me. I don't feel strong, or sure of myself. I just feel miserable. So. Maybe we should give the opposite strategy a try. On a purely theoretical level. For science, no other reasons and no expectations at all. And you don't have to deal with Ward, nobody expects you to. I will singlehandedly beat him up if he ever so much as looks funny at you."

Jemma let out a shaky laugh.

"As long as you don´t tell Coulson about it. I really don't want that kill switch to ever have to work."

"Yeah. I really wish AC hadn't done it. Because, that thing you said about something happening and good people becoming evil? He would be a good example, if we ever came to that."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I have been getting some comments asking for Simmons and Skye thoughts in all this, and since that was a very legit concern I tried to specifically address it here. My take on Jemma´s POV in particular is far from what I have seen speculated elsewhere, and I would like to hear everybody´s thoughts on it. Another question I have been getting is whether there will be Skyeward. Short answer is, both Skye and Ward are not in the right place for interaction right now. But! There will be acknowledging of their bond and there will be working through issues. Which I personally tend to call Skyeward as well, so there.


	10. Chapter 10

May tuned out the rest of the conversation between Skye and Simmons. Strangely, when she considered her options, there were two completely opposite directions she was itching to go. One was to check up on Ward, see if he was truly alright after that damn demonstration. The other one was to check up on Phil for exactly the same reason. The activation of the failsafe did not appear painful to Ward in that he just went completely unconscious from one moment to the next. As a means of execution it seemed a rather merciful option, but that kind of power over a breathing, moving, thinking being was overwhelming and deeply uncomfortable. May doubted Coulson had planned as far as to try out the functionality of the device on the day of its installation. She also doubted he expected to have to act on the threats he had delivered earlier. If he had truly thought Ward untrustworthy or dangerous to anyone at the Playground he would have never let him stay there. The little talk had been for the benefit of the team - and it had overshot its target by several kilometres at least. It would not have surprised May to see a look of utter revulsion in Skye's eyes after the demonstration drew to its end. The reading she got from her was not quite that, though. Revulsion would not have fazed May; uncertainty and worry the young agent directed at Phil and herself did.

It was the unwelcome memory of herself kneeling over the prisoner, pushing him down and holding him still under the falling water, that made May choose to go after Ward after all. Both men had made their own bed in this, but Phil had the advantages of much better mental health and a support system he actually knew he could call on once in a while, though he typically loathed to go to May with his troubles. She fully expected to find Ward in his room, tending to his wounds both figuratively and literally. She found him in the kitchen instead, quickly throwing together a ham sandwich. He froze when she came into view, visibly checking to confirm she had no objections. May suppressed the urge to nod to speed him on his way. It took him longer than it would have probably taken otherwise, but he did go back to his interrupted activity after a couple of seconds. He then went on to pack the sandwich into a napkin and make his way towards his room.

"You can eat here, you know," pointed out May.

"Simmons usually comes by to eat something around this time."

"You know all the team member's routines." It wasn't a question, and she did not try to make it one.

"Complying with the restrictions won't be an issue."

May could hardly tell him to relax about it less than half an hour after he received his full set of instructions, so she let it go.

"Make me another one," she offered instead. The rare moments when she and Ward had had anything resembling 'bonding time' before his reveal had been over hard liquor, but she doubted it was the ideal setup now. "It's past time you told me about the Fridge."

The thing about him that was both irritating and frightening was that he had apparently managed to hide in plain sight for over ten years, playing the part of a functioning and healthy person while being anything but. His truckload of issues had been completely invisible to any and all SHIELD agents and handlers before, and the more May thought about it, the less she could understand why. Because once seen, it was something impossible to un-see, impossible not to notice in every step he took, in every thing he said, in every damn reaction or non-reaction that he had. Skye had called him a robot, but it was worse than that. He was the wooden puppet of the fairy tale, but carved by a psychopath instead of a benign old man, knowing perfectly well that he wasn't a real boy but never ever dreaming of becoming one. The most Ward seemed to be able to do was to look on from the outside with the kind of entranced, abstract fascination and longing born not from the desire to belong but from the knowledge that he didn't.

And so, even if it was completely irritating and more that a little difficult to speak to him while being mindful of the clusterfuck her words could evolve into in his head, May was ready to offer Ward a distraction this once. She had never been the one to measure her words. Heart to heart talks bored and irritated her. Above all, she did not want him to think that they would become a fixture in his life. In the exceptional circumstances where he had just been rigged to die at Phil's whim, though…

It seemed like a good opportunity to make an effort and an exception.

May did not want to crowd the tiny room Ward was now assigned, knowing full well the importance of having a place to call his own. She walked him to the library instead, sat in the plush chair and took a bite from the sandwich he had made her in imitation of his own. It was just the bare basics - plain bread, no cheese, no lettuce or tomatoes. She swallowed it all the same, watching Ward imitate her ten times more hungrily.

"So, the Fridge..."

"I waited by the south wall of this complex for the military to come and pick the guys you had iced and took prisoner. Got onto their helicopter unseen, flew with them to their base. Got hold of a Longbow chopper there. Lost a bit of time there, but I didn't want to take the first chopper. It was a transport and not a good fit for a direct assault, not to mention that SHIELD would have been implicated in the theft. Flew the Longbow into the Fridge, pretended to make a full frontal attack, waited to be hit, crashed the thing into the wall. That was how I got in. Had to lie low for four days, until they had convinced themselves it had been an isolated attack, patched the wall and stopped coming to that level. I spent another eight days setting up the explosion. The elevator shafts run right through the middle of the structure, so vertical spread was not a problem. The trick was to make it explode horizontally into each level. I had to disable the fireproof doors on almost every floor. After that, it was simply a matter of cleaning up. Started from the top to make sure everyone was trapped inside and cut off the communications… Made a short work of it."

It sounded easy: a trademark of a well thought out plan. It never meant that it had actually been easy, though.

"Good job."

The smile showed in his eyes only, small but genuine. He looked like he wanted to add something but thought better about it.

"Was it hard?"

"No," was the immediate answer. "Took a lot of crawling and waiting, and time. Thought I would be ready in a week, but it took me more than two in the end."

"I meant, killing your people."

"No." The new answer was still immediate, and May would have cringed if she had not trained for a long while to expel such primitive reactions from her body. It had seemed like a legitimate, profound question for a moment, a way to let Ward open up about how he felt about changing sides and working against Hydra. A minimal consideration made it abundantly clear that it was more of insensitive meddling into an open wound than anything else.

Ward hadn't cringed at all, but he went back to not looking at her, and he left the food back onto the plate.

"They weren't… I didn't know them. And killing in itself stopped being hard a long time ago." He paused, then added, "Director Coulson has ordered I undergo psych evaluations."

And why was he acting like it was something to be held against him, when it had been his official SHIELD job description? Hell, before Coulson, it had been May's job description, too.

"And how is he planning to do that?"

"Personally. Twice a week."  
It did sound like Phil. It was sweet of him, to want to try. May smiled at the idea, though she could not very well imagine Ward and Coulson having heart to heart talks. She hoped it wasn't any kind of "tough love" setup that Phil had in mind. Ward had a kill switch now; it didn't get tougher than that.

"Well…" She could not intervene, Phil had been adamant about it. "Gather your footing, do your missions, keep you head down. We'll see how it goes in a couple of weeks from now. If everything is fine, you will get a long term goal. How does that sound?"

That, she could do. Think back on the hopelessness of him, when he was left with no plan to follow and no way out, and explain it to Phil. Make sure there was a light somewhere ahead of him. Even a small one would suffice. All the rules Coulson had set for Ward, no matter how draconian, were already having a calming effect on him.

"Thank you."

Sure enough, the next days bore witness to the emergence of calm, grounded patterns of behaviour that were light years away from Ward's initial apprehensive, hyper-alert state. May had expected the adaptation to be hard on everyone, but the truth was it proved to be surprisingly easy. Phil had the good sense not to send Ward out until he healed, and had explicitly informed him of the fact. Ward appeared to interpret this to mean that he needed to get back to the peak of his physical strength ASAP. He had visibly lost weight between his incarceration and the Fridge mission, but now that he knew exactly what was expected of him he was quick to take the steps needed to prepare for his assignment. He started to eat what he wanted from the kitchen without checking for permission anymore, just as he did not ask for permission to use the training room of the Playground. The very first day after the tagging May went down to work through her usual workout only to find him going at the punching bag with his headphones on, T-shirt already dripping wet at seven in the morning. He noticed her right away, but paused only long enough to check that she was not there to use the same equipment, and was back to his routine right away. As May moved through her own exercises she observed him take a short break, drink some water, stretch briefly and move on to the running mill. Fifteen minutes at full speed and he stopped, drank again and moved back to the punching bag.

Progressive training, the same technique he had been teaching Skye. May rather disliked it for all the stress it put the body through in a very short time, and for the implication that someone had been lazy enough to allow his muscles to turn slack in the first place. She would rather avoid slacking off on the maintenance than go through the intensive build up.

She observed Ward some more. It was a pleasing sight, aesthetically speaking. There was a ton of dedication and not an ounce on vanity in what he did; he applied himself to his training with the same single-minded concentration he used while oiling and checking his weapons. It had been that deadly efficiency with which he took care of his body what had made May conceive their initial sexual arrangement in the first place. Seeing him doing something so familiar again, and knowing what she knew now, she could think back on the nights she spent with him without the poison of the betrayal weighting on her mind. She had wanted it, and she had thought that the twenty years she had on him and Phil's friendship would protect her if things got weird on his end. She wondered now what had Ward thought about it, going in. May had never been forced, by situation or by her superiors, to use sex as a weapon, but she knew enough people who had been. The Black Widow's casualness on the topic was legendary. She wondered if people like Romanoff and Ward even knew that the other side of the coin existed. Not even in sense of love – May did not much believe in it herself – but as the ultimate release, the joy of simply letting go, have no obligations and no tasks to fulfil and simply cease to exist for a little while.

Probably not.

She shook herself of her thoughts and went to continue her exercises. Ward did not seem bothered by her staring. He had noticed, of course, but the only reaction was a little proud grin that came and went, and never destroyed his concentration.

Three days in, and it was becoming clear that the constancy provided by the deal had worked wonders on Ward. Watching him do better day after day truly put the depths of his initial brokenness into new perspective. A Ward who knew exactly what was expected of him was someone who actually had little problem looking May in the eye. A Ward with a definitive goal was someone who took good care of his physical needs without any prompting or need for permission. A Ward with a mission would speak up and discuss the parameters of said mission until he was completely satisfied.

He still avoided everyone in the base with the exception of May, whose company he actively sought out, and Coulson, whose debriefs and talks he tolerated. He religiously avoided crossing paths with Skye or Simmons, going as far as not eating if doing so required a stroll through an otherwise occupied kitchen. He'd get some provisions stored in his room for that: dry food, standard mission packages. The first time May noticed it she could not decide what to do about it. It felt logical, and she supposed it was what Coulson had wanted. She felt better realizing that any inhibitions disappeared on the days a mission was on. Ward was too responsible to let anything personal prevent him from being anything less than 100% in shape. He would go wherever he needed to, and face whoever was there before a mission. He would do so with a blank stare and try for minimum contact, but he would do it.

Simmons was more than happy with that. Skye was silently seething. The root of it didn't even lay in the betrayal, or whatever personal experiences they had shared before the event. Skye was, easily, the most compassionate person to ever grace the team. Strangely enough, the caring was becoming a problem in a very roundabout way. The more aware she became of everything that was wrong with him, the more upset she got. She was angry at him for not standing up to Garrett, and for not standing up to Phil and May. For not looking at her, or for doing it with his vacant expression. Several days into the arrangement, May had heard her screaming at him in the hangar area, though they were too far to understand actual words. By the time she arrived there, Skye was nowhere to be seen and Ward was making his weapon check up with an intensity and concentration he had probably not graced such a task with since his first year in the Academy.

"Everything all right here?" Ward's hand stilled, then tightened. He did not look up at her. "What did she want?"

"To talk," May was not a fan of talking herself, but even she never succeeded in making it sound like a dirty word. "I was doing my part. I didn't engage her."

"Never said you did."

"Well, I'm the one with the restriction order."

And this answer, in a nutshell, explained everything that was wrong with Phil´s original order to keep away from the team. Because Skye was itching for an opportunity to talk, while Ward was the one who did not want any contact and Phil´s order gave him a foolproof excuse not to do it.

Still, things were quickly getting better. A week in, his scar was healed and his behaviour could be resumed as professional to the extreme and jealously devoid of any personal distractions. Which was exactly as it had been in the first weeks after he got on the Bus, down to the general avoidance of any human contact as far as permitted by the situation. The role of a stoic SHIELD Agent was a well oiled mask, and Ward was fully back to it as soon as he got a minimal breather from the physical stress. Skye was not the only one to find it extremely disturbing and unsavoury, though nobody seemed to want to speak up about it. Ward was doing exactly what was being officially demanded from him, after all. For her part, May did not have the heart to call him out on his behaviour. It was obvious to her that he knew no other patterns for this kind of interaction, and also that falling back to it was giving him a welcome sense of security and relief after a very rough time. Only a month and a half had passed since Garrett´s death, and he was harming no one with this. Pushing Ward into high end human interactions, or maybe even concepts like loyalty, earning of trust and carefulness when choosing a master, could wait.

The first Coulson-sanctioned mission was a couple of hours at most, no violence involved, just following a hot trail for a little while. May did not even notice Ward was gone until she heard about it through an offhand comment by Coulson.

"How did he do?"

"As well as expected from a level 7 agent sent on a level 2 mission."

"Did you tell him he did OK?"

"Of course I did not tell him. It was a level 2 mission, it would have been condescending and he is not a dog. He does not need a treat every time he performs a trick. He has to learn to find satisfaction in knowing that his own actions are serving a greater good, not through a pat from his owner. "

"He is doing what you are asking. You should…"

"Do what, May? Allow him to bask in his dependency on others? I'm telling him what to do, because I have come to accept that he can't do it on his own and because sending him to rot in prison and washing my hands of him won't snap him out of it. But you? You're rewarding him for it. And as long as you do, he will not learn to atone for wrong choices by making right ones. Any other master, and he would be gladly cutting our throats in our sleep. He has to learn how to not be a puppet, and he has to learn it the hard way, because that's the _only_ way."

"He is not ready for that. I know you mean well, but… Look. I tortured him, and then I gave him a plate of pasta, and now he has a Stockholm syndrome centred around me. He was afraid and that was grateful, and it is easy for him to relate to that because it's virtually all he knows. You want to break that? Fine. Great. I'm all for it. Or do you think I enjoy being his second Garrett? But the thing is, he needs to stand on his own two feet before you can start preaching at him about good and evil from an impossibly high moral ground he knows he can never even hope to reach. He has to have a minimum of self worth to even think about trying for atonement."

"It is never too early to learn about good and evil, how can you even say that? If Ward wants to get a second chance, he'd better take a hard look at himself ASAP and start working. And by working, I don't mean going on missions."

"If, Phil? If he wants a second chance? Everybody here thinks he is already getting it. Everybody, _including_ Ward himself. You might want to inform him that risking his life will earn him absolutely nothing in your eyes, before you send him on any more missions."

"I meant a second chance at a good life, May. At being his own person," he said with a slight smile. "It's nice to know how protective you are becoming of him, but you should remember that he's a grown man and avoid the coddling."

The second mission was much more demanding, an 'in and out' play into a building suspected of hiding a Chitauri worship ring. May heard Phil listing the parameters in the war room and being very matter of fact about it, but in the end he did offer some words on the topic of Ward being careful and coming back in one piece. It was all the encouragement anyone ever got from Coulson before a mission, so Ward could hardly complain about it. She did not intervene, even after she felt Ward's questioning gaze linger on the back on her neck. He was Coulson's problem now. Both men should learn to deal with it.

Phil's insinuation that May was coddling him stayed with her long after the actual conversation. Two weeks in, she deemed Ward to be stable and happy enough in his new routine to start running the experiment of completely ignoring him. Their "relationship" had remained unchanged during all this time, with Ward subtly looking for some kind of approval or sign from her almost every day. It was nothing overt; in fact it was masterfully camouflaged. He would cross paths with her in the corridor, making eye contact briefly before turning right to the communal showers. The timing of their individual training sessions became synchronised day in and day out, and not through May's doing. She was getting more frustrated and tired of it with each passing hour, but she did not take action until the one time she was out on a short mission herself, and came back only to find him in the hangar waiting for her to step off the plane. If he had at least been doing or pretending to do anything useful, and if she had not been sweaty, dead tired and bleeding from a head wound, she would not have snapped as she did. Even then, she still tried to avoid becoming confrontational – May knew just how poisonous she could be if she lost her patience – by sending her best unimpressed gaze in his direction. The message had to have been clear and still he lingered, not saying anything and even sending a little timid smile in her direction.

"You have nothing to do but follow me? You realize that's not why we're keeping you around, right? You have to get your shit together before someone starts wondering why we even bother."

She guessed she should feel somewhat guilty at the full blown wince that followed, but she was way too tired. The upside was that Ward seemed to get the message quickly enough after that. From then on, there were no more causal crosses in the hangar, no lingering looks and no hidden plays to debrief in May's presence rather than in Coulson. Even Ward's training schedule had moved in order to keep them separated.

All in all, May felt pleased with herself. She had thought she was protecting Ward, giving him a familiar setting to step on, but in doing it, hadn't she done exactly the same to him as Garrett had been doing? If nobody challenged him, how was he supposed to learn?

She still made a point to check up on him once in a while, which was a big feat considering how good at avoidance he was when he tried – and he certainly was trying now with her, too. She saw no overt signs of anything going wrong. Ward trained, went out on missions, wrote his reports, read in his down time and had once even sought Simmons out of his own volition after coming back from a fight with a nasty gash on his right hand. The girl had patched him up gently enough, chatting about tetanus shots, sensible nerves and range of movement. She then had patted him on the shoulder awkwardly, a gesture you would offer an unknown but visibly starved dog that you were equal parts sorry for and afraid of, and basically just wished he'd limped away. She got thanks and a lifeless, fake smile in return. Uncomfortable as the entire experience had been, it did have the benefit of breaking the ice a little. At the very least May was now assured that Ward would know to seek medical help and not skip it altogether for fear of interacting with Simmons.

Skye, on the other hand, he still avoided religiously, but that was just as well. These two seemed destined to never understand each other. Skye was a free spirit, wild and outspoken and optimistic and her own person since the teenage years. Try as she might, she simply could not conceive the submissiveness that was now impregnating everything Ward did. And he had been her SO to boot, this confident, experienced and strong person who had nagged her month after month and showed her ways to improve and protect herself. May supposed that deep down, all Skye wanted was to have that person back, for her sake but mostly for his own. She all but hissed at him when they crossed paths, demanding he look at her, talk to her, talk back at Coulson and May, think for himself. She was nasty about it too, mostly on the assumption that she could snap him out of his headspace by humiliating him but also because she was starting to become truly angry at him. She recognised his weaknesses, and she seemed to despise them more than May ever did. May had the luxury of not having cared before, but Skye's involvement with Ward had been deep and personal. She also wasn't good enough an agent to pick up any of his minimal body language clues, so his subtly tensed shoulders, slightly bowed head and rather quicker and jerkier than usually movements went over her head. She simply took his non reactions as him ignoring her, which was in turn working her into a true rage.

The day when Skye appeared in the kitchen while he was making himself another sandwich, stood at his back and icily asked him what he would do if May sent him away or died was the day May finally snapped at her. It was a mission day too, which explained the fact that Ward was even in the common area with other people to begin with. He was already in his mission gear, minus the weapons, tense in what have come to be an automatic dread reaction to Skye's presence.

"I mean, will you just find yourself another master to follow?" May could not see his face, but she saw him freezing completely at the question, tense from neck to hands to feet, and slowly doubling over the counter slightly as if to steady himself. Even someone as clueless as Skye could not misinterpret it as anything else but a harassed and stressed out, but still subservient response, but she went on gleefully. "Is it that easy for you? Or that convenient? Not thinking for yourself, not having any responsibility? It's not loyalty, you know, just cowardice."

May had just had enough of watching Ward. Skye, she did not need to watch much. She just backhanded her across the face. It was a soft enough blow, aimed to upset and to shut up, and it had worked beautifully. Skye´s eyes welled up in pain and surprise, and went even wider upon understanding that it had come from May of all people.

"Lay off of him."

"What?"

"I said, lay off, and _don't_ presume to talk of cowardice to him. Not until you have gone on as many missions as he has, have watched Coulson die on you and have had a peacemaker installed into your chest set up to blow up your heart."

Skye was instantly ashamed, May could tell, but she was also willing to fight her on this, which was how May knew she wasn't doing it to be nasty and pitiless. She was trying to be cruel to be kind in the long run. It was the same approach Phil had, except where Phil was playing the part of SHIELD Director, Skye only had personal feelings to step on. The result was still the same: chances were very good it wouldn't work on Ward. For all the pressure and all the blows he had received in his life, he had fought back exactly once, and it had not been to defend himself but to defend John Garrett.

The girl held up her hand to touch her cheek, and came a little closer to Ward. She even bent a little to try to look him in the face.

"Sorry, Ward. May is right, I was out of line. I didn't mean to put you down. Just to make you think. You're not a robot. You're a person, and you can _choose_. You think Garrett had power over you, but it was only because you gave it to him. And then you let it happen with May. And you'll let it happen again, if somebody doesn't make you snap out of it. You have to realise you can't go on like this."

He still had not turned to face either of them, the food laying forgotten on the counter in front of him. There was a pause, during which even May waited to see if Skye's words would come through. For the first minute, nothing happened. Then Ward finally moved, but only to carefully take his sandwich and walk out of the kitchen without looking at either of them.

"Let it go," May offered not unkindly. "You want to break him out of it, but you will just as surely hammer him into the ground if you keep at this."

"Why?" was the strangled whisper at May's back as she came to the counter to put away the kitchen knife Ward had left behind. The voice was close to tears, but it was not the sting of the blow that coloured Skye's cheeks now. "What the hell is wrong with him?"

"Do you truly want to know? Simmons is the clever one, and she doesn't."

"I want to know so I can fight it."

"Maybe you can't. Maybe letting him be is the kinder choice."

"He tried to explain it to me, once. I answered that I would never give him what he wanted. I meant the decryption for the drive… But that wasn't what he was talking about. He said one day, I would understand. More than anything, he wanted me to understand, and now he acts like doesn't want even that. Well, tough luck. I don't believe that. I don't believe that letting him be is the kinder choice. I want to give him what he once wanted, even though he's forgotten how to want. And I want to know what has happened to damage him so badly. I want to understand," she smiled sadly. "And I'm going about it in all the wrong ways, aren't I? Thank you for pointing it out. I never meant to upset him. I'll think of something else. Talk to Simmons about it, maybe."

"You do that."

May walked by the hangar shortly after that. Ward was checking up his weapons, kneeling between the crate that contained the collection of icers and another one containing real guns, doing pre-mission check ups. His hair was longer now, especially compared to the short haircuts he had favoured while in his Agent mode. He probably did not have any means to deal with it, not having free time to go out of the base. Now it was hanging into his eyes, effectively hiding them from May. She strolled by casually, wondering if she should break her self imposed protocol of avoidance and talk a little to him. She decided not to, in the end. The damage made by Skye's amateur attempts at therapy was already done. And there was an offhand chance that Ward would actually learn something out of it. If somebody's anger could get to him, it had to be Skye's. He also seemed highly concentrated on his task, taking a gun out of the crate, taking it apart and putting it back after the check up, and she knew that he found handling weapons calming.

The scene in the kitchen had been bad enough, though, and she came by one more time a little before the official get-go to do her personal Ward pre-mission check up. She was pleased to find him still working with his weapons, still taking a gun out of the crate, taking it apart with jerky movements and putting it back. It was only afterwards, when the mission had been blown and disaster was all over the news, that she realised that on both occasions he had been handling the same gun.


End file.
